Doing Everyday Stuff. Part I contains a pretty complete laundry list of all the essential. In this part...

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1 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 1 Part II Doing Everyday Stuff Part I contains a pretty complete laundry list of all the essential things to do in Windows XP. You find out about such elementary stuff as controlling the icons on your desktop, adding and removing software and printers, regulating and dispensing with the files and folders that manage to clutter your hard drive, launching your programs, obtaining online help, and even safely shutting down the whole Windows kit and caboodle. In this part... Adding or Removing Programs Arranging and Sizing Icons in a Window Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer Copying (and Moving) Files and Folders Creating New Files and Folders Creating Shortcuts Customizing the Desktop Deleting Junk Formatting a Disk Getting Help and Support Getting Info on a Disk, Folder, or File Launching Programs Moving and Resizing Windows Naming Files and Folders Opening Files and Folders Playing Music, Video, and Movies Printing Running Programs in Compatibility Mode Searching for Files and Folders Selecting Commands on Menus Selecting Commands on Explorer Bars Selecting Commands from Toolbars Selecting Files and Folders Shutting Down Windows Using the Command Prompt Using the Windows Taskbar Using Windows Update

2 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 2 2 Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Adding or Removing Programs As you continue to use Windows XP, you ll undoubtedly get new programs that you need to install on your computer. Also, as time goes on and disk space becomes more precious or newer versions of the software come your way, you may need to uninstall programs that you previously added. In addition to using Add or Remove Programs to install and uninstall application programs, you will also use it to add and remove various Windows components. Putting programs on your computer To install a new application program from diskettes or a CD-ROM by using the Add or Remove Programs Control Panel, follow these steps: 1. Click the Start button and then click Control Panel to open the Control Panel window. 2. Click the Add or Remove Programs hyperlink in Category view to open the Add or Remove Programs dialog box. If the Control Panel opens in Classic view (indicated by the individual icons rather than a list of categories), double-click the Add or Remove icon. 3. Put the CD-ROM in your computer s CD-ROM drive or put the first diskette in your computer s floppy disk drive. 4. Click the Add New Programs button on the left side of the dialog box and then select the CD or Floppy button to install a program from the CD or floppy disk you inserted in the drive. 5. Follow the steps as outlined in the Install Program From Floppy or CD-ROM Installation wizard to install your new program.

3 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 3 Adding or Removing Programs 3 You can also use the Run command on the Start menu to install a program from the Run dialog box. In the Open text box in the Run dialog box, type the drive letter that contains the disk or CD-ROM from which you re installing the program, followed by a colon and the name of the installation program (either setup or install). For example, to install a new CD-ROM game that uses install as the installation command, you type d:\install (assuming that D is the letter assigned to your CD-ROM drive; if this isn t the case, replace d with the letter your system uses) in the Open text box of the Run dialog box and then click the OK button or press Enter. Use the Install Wizard to install all new Windows XP versions of software (also known as 32-bit versions of a program). Install programs from the Run dialog box when you install older software whose installation instructions talk about entering an install or setup command in the Run dialog box. See also Add or Remove Programs in Part IV for more on using the Install Wizard. Adding Windows components When you first install Windows XP (doing a standard installation), not all of the Windows accessories and auxiliary tools are installed, by any means. To install additional Windows components from the Add or Remove Programs dialog box, follow these steps:

4 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 4 4 Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff 1. Click the Add/Remove Windows Components button on the left side of the Add or Remove Programs dialog box to open the Windows Components Wizard. 2. Locate the category of the component(s) you want to add in the Components list box. When the check box for a particular category is unchecked, that means that none of its components are installed. When the check box for a particular category is checked but the check box is shaded (as opposed to white), this means that only some of the components in that category are currently installed. 3. To select which component(s) in that category to install, click the category icon or name to select it and then click the Details button at the bottom of the dialog box. Windows displays a new dialog box, listing each of the individual components for the particular category. All those that are currently installed have their check boxes selected. 4. To install component(s) from the list, click the component check box. 5. After you re finished selecting components to install, click the OK button to close the dialog box and return to the Wizard Components Wizard dialog box. 6. Repeat Steps 2 through 5 for all the Windows components that you need to add. When you re finished selecting components to add, click the Next button to move to the next dialog box where the wizard starts installing the selected components. 7. Click the Finish button when the Completing the Windows Components Wizard dialog box appears. Be sure that you have the Windows XP CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive so that Windows can find the files for the components you selected. Note that some components require that you restart Windows XP before their new settings take effect. Taking programs off your computer Windows XP includes an uninstall utility that takes the pain out of removing unneeded or obsolete versions of a program from your computer. To uninstall a program installed with Windows XP (as I describe in the preceding section, Putting programs on your computer ), follow these steps: 1. Click the Start button and then click Control Panel to open the Control Panel window.

5 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 5 Arranging and Sizing Icons in a Window 5 2. In the Category view where you see a list of Control panel categories, click the Add or Remove Programs hyperlink to open the Add or Remove Programs dialog box. In the Classic view where you see individual Control panel icons, double-click the Add or Remove Programs icon. 3. Click the Change or Remove Programs button on the left side of the Add or Remove dialog box to display the Currently Installed Programs list box. 4. Click the program you want to remove in the Currently Installed Programs list box (when you click a program name, the description expands to include a Change/Remove button or separate Change and Remove buttons). 5. Click the Change/Remove button or the Remove button if Change and Remove are separate. 6. Click the OK button in the alert dialog box that appears to confirm your removal of the program. When the Uninstaller finishes removing the program, click the Close button to close the Add or Remove Programs dialog box and to return to the Control Panel window. Use the Windows XP uninstaller to get rid of any unwanted program that you ve installed with the Add or Remove Programs Control Panel. Using this utility to remove a program (rather than just deleting the program folder) ensures that all vestiges of the program are removed from the system and that you get back every byte of storage space to which you re entitled. To remove unneeded Windows components, click the Add/Remove Windows Components button in the Add or Remove Programs dialog box and then locate and remove the check mark from the components you want removed before you select the Next button. Remember that if you remove the check mark from a category of components rather than from a particular component within that category, Windows will remove all the components. Arranging and Sizing Icons in a Window When browsing local files in any of three browsing windows (My Document, My Computer, and Internet Explorer 6), you can modify the size of the icons used to represent files and folders as well as determine how much (if any) information about them is displayed. To change the way icons appear in any of these windows, choose from the following commands on the window View pull-down

6 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 6 6 Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff menu. Note that the same menu options appear when you rightclick in the window to display the shortcut menu or click the Views button on the window toolbar: Thumbnails: Changes the file and folder icons to little thumbnail sketches (each in a separate box). Use this option on folders that contain lots of graphics files and you can use the thumbnail sketches to quickly locate the file or files that you want to use. Note that the My Pictures folder automatically selects this view. Tiles (the default): Displays the largest version of the folder and file icons, with their names to the right. Icons: Displays a smaller version of the folder and file icons, with their names below. List: Uses the smallest version of the folder and file icons with their folders and filenames arranged in a single column along the left side of the window. Details: Adds columns of additional information (such as a description, or the file type, file size, and so on) to the arrangement used when you select the List option. Switch to the Icons viewing option when you need to see as much of the window contents as possible. Switch to the Details viewing option when you need to get as much information as possible about the files and folders in a window. After you decide how file and folder icons appear in a window, you can also choose how they re arranged. Choose View Arrange Icons By and select from the following options on the Arrange Icons submenu: Name: Sorts icons alphabetically by name. Type: Sorts icons by file type. Size: Sorts icons by size, from smallest to largest. Modified: Sorts icons by the date there were last modified, from oldest to most recent. Show in Groups: Arranges the file icons in groups by using the current arrange option (Name, Type, Size, or Modified) so that when Name is selected, files are put into letter groups, such as A, B, C, and so on. When Size is selected, the files are put into the following groups: Tiny (up to 50K), Small (51K to 100K), Medium (101K to 500K), and Large (above 500k). Auto Arrange: Arranges icons in columns by using the arrangement option in effect (Name, Type, Size, or Modified).

7 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 7 Align to Grid: Keeps icons aligned by snapping them to the invisible desktop grid (note that this option is available only when arranging icons on the desktop it remains dimmed in windows such as My Documents, My Computer, and Internet Explorer 6 (see Customizing the Desktop later in this part for details). When you point to a menu command, the status bar at the bottom of the window displays a description of what that command does. Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer You can t say that Windows XP doesn t give you sufficient ways to browse the components of your computer. In addition to the three major windows (My Documents, My Computer, and Windows Explorer) for browsing general stuff, such as local drives, folders, and files, you get a My Pictures window for browsing all the nifty graphics you scan, download, and otherwise cram on your hard drive. You also get a My Music folder for your favorite music clips. If you use the Windows Movie Maker to edit your video clips or download the Microsoft Reader to read your favorite electronic book online, Windows adds My Videos and My Library folders for storing your videos and ebooks as well. My Documents Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer 7 The My Documents folder provides a place to store your favorite files for easy and quick retrieval. This folder is often the default folder for saving the new files that you create with application programs, such as word processors and spreadsheets. The first time you open My Documents, the two folder icons, My Pictures (for storing your favorite graphic files) and My Music (for storing music files), appear. See My Pictures and My Music that follow for details. To open the My Documents folder from the Windows desktop, click the Start button on the Windows XP taskbar and then click My Documents at the top of the second column. To open My Documents from another folder, such as My Computer, click the Address bar drop-down button (on the right side) and then click My Documents at the top of the pop-up list (right below Desktop at the very top). Note that Windows XP programs, such as WordPad and Paint, and Office XP programs, such as Word 2002 and Excel 2002, automatically save files to your My Documents folder unless you specifically choose another location. To save a file that you create with these programs in some other folder, you need to select that folder in the Save In drop-down list box of the Save As dialog box.

8 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 8 8 Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff My Pictures The My Pictures folder located inside the My Documents folder enables you to collect all your favorite graphics that you ve scanned, taken with your digital camera (and not to mention, downloaded from the World Wide Web), and stores them in one easy-to-find place. The My Pictures window automatically displays all the files in the thumbnail view so that you can tell what images it contains at a glance. However, the coolest thing about the My Pictures folder is that it also lets you do a whole bunch of nifty things to the graphics in the Image Preview window, which you open by double-clicking the graphics file icon, such as Zoom in or out on the graphic in the Image Preview window by clicking the Zoom In (the magnifier with the plus sign) or the Zoom Out (the magnifier with the minus sign). Print the selected graphic in the Image Preview window by clicking the Print button (the one with the printer) or by pressing Ctrl+P. Rotate the selected graphic in the Image Preview window clockwise by clicking the Rotate Clockwise button (Ctrl+K) or rotate it counterclockwise by clicking the Rotate Counter-clockwise button (Ctrl+L). To open the My Pictures window from the Windows XP desktop, click the Start button and then click My Pictures (second from the

9 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 9 top in the right-hand column in the Start pop-menu). To open this folder from another folder, such as My Computer, click the Address bar drop-down button (on the right side) and then click My Documents at the top of the pop-up list (right below Desktop at the very top). You can then open My Pictures by double-clicking that icon in the My Documents window. If you re partial to graphics (as I am) and use the My Pictures folder a great deal, you might want to create a shortcut to this folder on the Windows XP desktop. That way, you can always open the folder from the desktop in a single operation. The easiest way to create this shortcut is to open the My Documents window, right-click the My Pictures folder, and then choose Send To Desktop (create shortcut) from the folder shortcut menu. If you want to set a picture whose thumbnail you can see in the My Pictures folder as the background graphic for your Windows XP desktop, select the file in the list box of the My Pictures window and then click the Set as Desktop Background hyperlink in the Picture Tasks section of the My Pictures navigation pane. Making slideshows Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer 9 The navigation pane that appears on the left side of the My Pictures window contains a View as a Slideshow link that you can click to have Windows display your graphics files as a slideshow. When you click this link, Windows displays each of the graphics in the My Pictures window in succession for about ten seconds at a time, starting with whatever graphic file is selected at the time. To control the pace of the slideshow or to pause or stop it, click the mouse button or press any key on your keyboard. Windows then displays a slideshow controller (with a group of buttons that look suspiciously like the ones on a VCR controller) in the upper-right corner of the screen. Here s how to use these buttons: Pause Slideshow (the one with the two vertical bars): Click to pause the slideshow. Start Slideshow (the first one with the right-pointing triangle): Click to restart the show. Next Picture (the one with the right-pointing triangle touching the vertical bar): Click to pause the show and advance to the next image in the My Pictures window. Previous Picture (the one with the left-pointing triangle touching the vertical bar): Click to pause the show and go back to the image you previously viewed. Note that after pausing the slideshow, you can advance to the next image by clicking the mouse button.

10 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff To close the slideshow and return to the My Pictures window, click the Close window button (the one with the X). You can also close up shop by pressing the Esc key at any time during the show, even if the slideshow controller isn t currently on-screen. After you create a slideshow, Windows automatically creates a screen saver that is called (appropriately enough) My Pictures Slideshow by using the images in the slideshow. To select this screen saver and, perhaps, change the settings, use the options on the Screen Saver tab of the Display Properties dialog box; see Display in Part IV for details on changing these types of desktop settings. Printing pictures The navigation pane on the left side of the My Pictures window contains a link to the Photo Printing Wizard that enables you to format and print your digital photographs. The Photo Printing Wizard automatically selects all the loose graphics filed in the My Pictures folder. To print photographs from a folder within the My Pictures folder, click the folder to select it before you click the Print Pictures link. 1. Click the Print Pictures link to open the Photo Printing Wizard and then select the Next button to move from the Welcome dialog box to the Photo Selection dialog box. 2. By default all the photos in the My Pictures folder or the specific subfolder you selected prior to opening the wizard are selected in this dialog box. To print just some of these photos, remove the check marks from all the ones you don t want to print. To remove check marks from individual photos, click those check boxes. To remove check marks from all the photos, click the Clear All button (you can then select the photos that you want to print by individually clicking those check boxes). 3. After selecting the photo to print, select the Next button to move from the Photo Selection dialog box to the Printing Options dialog box. Here, you can select a new printer to use (the Photo Printing Wizard automatically selects the Windows default printer) and/or a new paper size to use. To select a new printer, select it from the drop-down list box marked with the heading, What printer do you want to use? 4. (Optional) To change the layout of the printing or the paper source, click the Printing Preferences button to open the Document Properties dialog box for your printer and then select the new paper source from the Paper Source drop-down list on the Paper/Quality tab and/or modify the orientation or number of pages per sheet on the Layout tab.

11 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page (Optional) To change the paper size or number of copies, click the Advanced button (available on either the Layout/Quality or the Layout tab of the Document Properties dialog box for your printer) to open the Advanced Properties dialog box. Click Paper Size in the outline of your printer options and then select a new paper size from the drop-down list. Click Copy Count and type the new number in the text box or use the spinner buttons to select the new number. Click the OK button in the Advanced Properties dialog box when you have finished changing these options and then click OK in the Document Properties dialog box for your printer to return to the wizard. 6. After changing your printing options, select the Next button to move from the Printing Options dialog box to the Layout Selection dialog box. This dialog box displays a list box of Available Layouts on the left with a Print Preview box on the right. Select the most appropriate layout for printing the graphics on the designated paper size by clicking it in the Available Layouts list box. Then see how the photos will look using the selected layout in the Print Preview box on the right. 7. After selecting the layout to use, select the Next button to move the last dialog box of the Photo Printing Wizard that shows you the progress of the photo printing. Note that you can click the Cancel Printing button in this dialog box at any time during the printing process if you run into some kind of printing problem that necessitates abandoning the photo printing. If you don t have a printer suitable for printing your photos (perhaps you only have a black-and-white printer but want color prints), you can have them professionally printed by an Internet Print Ordering service. Select the photos to print or the graphic folder that contains them and then click the Order Prints Online hyperlink in the My Pictures navigation pane. Doing this opens the Internet Print Ordering Wizard where you can select the Internet Printing company to use (such as OFOTO or Kodak) and then specify the print size(s) and quantities. The Internet printing company you select then makes your digital prints by using its equipment and photo paper. The prices run from about $0.49 a print for a 4 x 6-inch print up to around $3.99 for an 8 x 10-inch print of a photo. The bill is charged to a credit card and the prints are shipped to you via a courier service, such as FedEx, in a few business days. My Music Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer 11 The My Music folder is the place where Windows automatically saves all the audio clips you download from the Internet or save on your hard drive with Windows Media Player. The My Music folder, like My Pictures, is an automatic part of the My Documents folder.

12 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff To open the My Music folder from the Windows XP desktop, click the Start button and then click My Music (normally third from the top in the right-hand column in the Start pop-up menu. To open this folder from another folder, such as My Computer, click the Address bar drop-down button (on the right side) and then click My Documents at the top of the pop-up list (right below Desktop at the very top). You can then open My Music by double-clicking that folder icon (the one with the music note in it) in the My Documents window. Like the folders in My Pictures, the folders in My Music appear in thumbnail view. To play a particular audio file that you ve saved in the My Music folder with Windows Media Player, right-click the file icon and then click Play on the shortcut menu. Windows Media Player opens and begins playing your selection. To play all the audio files in a particular folder, click the folder icon before clicking the Play All hyperlink in the Music Tasks section of the My Music folder. To play all of the audio clips and tracks saved in the My Music folder, make sure that no folder or file is selected before you click the Play All hyperlink. Click the Shop for Music Online hyperlink in the Music Tasks section of the My Music folder navigation pane to look for new albums and videos online. When you click this link, Windows connects you to the MSN WindowsMedia.com Web site. Once there, you can search for audio and video clips that you can download and play on Windows Media Player and you can purchase your favorite audio CDs. See also Playing Music, Video, and Movies later in this part for details on playing audio files with Windows Media Player. My Videos The My Videos folder is the place where Windows automatically saves all the video clips you download from the Internet or save on your hard drive with the Windows Movie Maker program. Windows automatically adds a My Videos folder to the My Documents folder on your hard drive as soon as you open the Windows Movie Maker program to view or save digital video clips on your hard drive. To open My Videos from the Windows XP desktop, click the Start button and then click My Documents (normally at the top in the right-hand column in the Start pop-up menu) before you doubleclick the My Videos folder icon. To open this folder from another folder, such as My Computer, click the Address bar drop-down button (on the right side) and then click My Documents at the top of the pop-up list (right below Desktop at the very top). You can then open My Videos by double-clicking that folder icon (the one with the filmstrip in it) in the My Documents window.

13 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 13 Once the My Videos folder is open on your desktop, you can play any of the movies or video clips with Windows Media Player by double-clicking those file icons. My Library The My Library folder is the place where Windows automatically saves all the ebooks that you download into the Library of the Microsoft Reader software from online booksellers, such as Barnes&Noble.com or Amazon.com. The Microsoft Reader automatically creates the My Library folder in the My Documents folder when you download Reader. The easiest way to obtain the Microsoft Reader software for your computer is to go to ebook sections of the Barnes&Noble.com ( or Amazon.com ( Web sites and then click the Microsoft Reader hyperlink. The Microsoft Reader is a free download that takes about minutes to download with a 56K modem and about 5 10 minutes with a DSL/cable modem. After installing the Microsoft Reader on your hard drive, you need to activate the software so that it keeps track of the ebook titles that you purchase (many ebook titles are available for free download, especially older, more classic literature titles, such as Bram Stoker s Dracula and Henry David Thoreau s Walden). After activating your copy of Microsoft Reader, you can then download a free copy of the Encarta Pocket Dictionary that enables you to look up any word in the ebook text. The Microsoft Reader uses a special type called ClearType for rendering fonts so that they appear more legible on the computer screen and can be sized up or down as you want. It also enables you to annotate your ebook text with highlighting, notes, and bookmarks, which you can search from a special Annotations Index, and do a general search for any text. Best of all, Reader automatically keeps track of your place in the book so that you can always find your place in the text by using the Most Recent Page link. Any ebook that you download for Microsoft Reader from an online bookseller is automatically placed in the My Library folder on your computer. To begin reading the title, all you have to do is start Microsoft Reader and click the title name in the Library section. My Computer Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer 13 The My Computer window gives you quick access to the components of your computer system. To open the My Computer window, click the Start button on the Windows taskbar and then click My Computer on the right side of the Start menu.

14 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff When you first open the My Computer window, it displays all the major folders (including Shared Documents and My Documents) along with all local drives attached to your computer. The My Computer window is very useful for getting an overview of the parts of your computer. To see what s on a drive or to open one of the folders in the My Computer window, simply open an icon as follows: If you open a drive icon, such as a floppy (A:) or the hard drive (C:), or CD Drive (D:), Windows opens a new window showing the folders and files on that disk (note that the drive letters that appear depend upon the particulars of your system). If you open a floppy drive that doesn t have a diskette in it, Windows gives you an error message indicating that the drive isn t ready. If you meant to put a diskette in the drive, do so and then click the Retry button or press Enter. If the diskette in the floppy drive isn t formatted, Windows displays an alert box asking you whether you want to format the diskette now. To format the diskette, click the Yes button or press Enter to open the Format dialog box. See Formatting a Disk later in this part.

15 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 15 Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer 15 If you open a CD-ROM drive icon and the drive contains an audio CD, Windows opens Windows Media Player and starts playing the compact disc (see Playing Music, Video, and Movies later in this part for details). If the drive contains a cool game or some other data disk, Windows just opens a standard window showing the stuff on the CD-ROM. In the case of a game that you ve never played, double-click the Install (sometimes called Setup) icon. To view the folders and files in your My Documents folder, double-click this folder icon. To search for a file or folder on your computer, click the Search button on the Standard Buttons toolbar to open the Search Companion Explorer bar. See Searching for Files and Folders in this part for details on searching. To use a Control Panel icon in the Control Panel window, click the Control Panel hyperlink in the My Computer navigation pane. See Part IV, The Windows Control Panel. If you prefer to have Windows XP open a separate window each time you open a folder or file icon in the My Computer window (instead of having Windows replace the contents of the My Computer window with the one you re opening), follow these steps: 1. In the My Computer window, choose Tools Folder Options to open the Folder Options dialog box. 2. In the Browse Folders section of the General Tab, select the Open Each Folder in Its Own Window radio button. 3. Click OK to close the Folder Options dialog box. Using the Folders Explorer bar Using the drive and folder icons in the My Computer window isn t the only way to explore the contents of your computer. You can also use the Folders Explorer bar to display the components of your computer system (including any network drives if you use Windows XP on a network) in an outline view. To display (and hide) the Folders Explorer bar in the My Computer window, choose View Explorer Bar Folders or click the Folders button on the Standard Buttons toolbar. The Folders pane then appears to the immediate left of the navigation pane, listing all of the drives, both local and network, that make up your computer system.

16 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff This list normally begins with the Desktop icon and ends with the Recycle Bin icon. In between these two, you see icons for My Computer and My Network Places (which you can use only if your computer is part of a network). Of all these icons appearing in the Folder pane, only the My Computer icon is expanded so that beneath it you see icons representing the drives and folders in this folder except that the Folders pane listing includes a Control Panel icon that doesn t also appear in the contents area. Note the use of plus (+) and minus (-) buttons in the Folders list. When an icon has a plus button in front of it, this means that the level is condensed and that more sublevels are available with their own icons you can view. When a minus button precedes an icon, the level is currently expanded and all icons on the next level are currently displayed. To expand a condensed level, click that plus button. To collapse an expanded level, click the minus button. Note that when you click the plus button, it turns to a minus button at the same time that it expands the sublevels. Clicking the minus button turns it into a plus button at the same time it collapses the sublevels and condenses the outline. When the expanded folder/subfolder outline in the Folders pane becomes too large to view in its entirety given the current size of

17 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 17 Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer 17 the My Computer window, vertical and horizontal scroll bars appear as needed to help you navigate your way through the lists of folders and system components. Note that you can resize the Folders pane within the My Computer window. To adjust the size of the Folders pane (relative to the other pane with the navigation pane and the contents area), position the mouse pointer on the dividing line between the two and then drag right or left when the pointer changes to a double-headed arrow. To display the contents of a particular drive or folder on your computer system, expand the outline until that icon appears and then click the icon to display the subfolders and files in the contents area to the immediate right of the navigation pane. Mapping network drives If you use Windows XP on a local area network (LAN), and you save and open files in shared folders as part of a workgroup on a server, you can create a virtual drive (a special kind of shortcut to a folder on a network drive) whose drive letter appears in the My Computer window along with those of your local drives a process referred to as mapping a network drive. To map a network drive, follow these steps: 1. Click Tools Map Network Drive on the My Computer menu bar to open the Map Network Drive dialog box. 2. Click the Drive drop-down list button and select the drive letter you want to assign to the virtual drive containing this network folder (note that the list starts with Z: and works backwards to B:) from the pop-up menu. 3. Type the path to the folder on the network drive in the Folder text box or click the Browse button and select the folder directly from the outline of the network drives and folders shown in the Browse For Folder dialog box. (This outline has plus and minus buttons that work just like those in the Folders pane, which I explained in the previous section.) Now click OK to close the Browse For Folder dialog box and return to the Map Network Drive dialog box (where the path to the selected folder now appears). 4. If you want Windows to recreate this virtual drive designation for the selected network folder each time that you start and log on to your computer, leave the check mark in the Reconnect at Logon check box. If you only want to use this drive designation during the current work session, click the Reconnect at Logon check box to remove the check mark.

18 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff 5. If you re mapping the network drive for someone else who uses a logon different from your own, click the Different User Name hyperlink and enter the user name and password in the associated text boxes in the Connect As dialog box before you click OK. 6. Click the Finish button in the Map Network Drive dialog box to close it and return to the My Computer window. The network folder that you mapped onto a virtual drive now appears at the bottom of the contents area under a new section called Network Drives and Windows automatically opens the folder in a separate window. After mapping a network folder onto a virtual drive, you can redisplay the contents in the My Computer window by double-clicking that drive icon. To remove a virtual drive that you ve mapped onto My Computer, click Tools Disconnect Network Drive; next click the letter of the virtual drive in the Disconnect Network Drives dialog box and then click OK. Windows then displays an alert dialog box warning you that files and folders are currently open on the virtual drive and that you run the risk of losing data if files are open. If you re sure that you have no files open on that drive, click the Yes button to break the connection and remove the virtual drive from the My Computer window. My Network Places My Network Places (called the Network Neighborhood in earlier Windows versions) gives you an overview of all the workgroups or domains, computers, shared network folders, and shared resources (such as network printers) that are part of your Local Area Network (LAN). To open My Network Places from the Windows XP desktop, click the Start button on the Windows XP taskbar and then click My Network Places in the right-hand column of the Start menu. To open My Network Places from another window, such as My Documents or My Computer, click the My Network Places hyperlink in the Other Places section of the navigation panes. The following figure shows the icons in the My Network Places window that represent an entire network and the shared network folders.

19 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 19 Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer 19 The My Network Places can give you a graphic view of the domains and workgroups set up on your network and the resources that are networked together. When you first open the My Network Places window, Windows shows you all the shared folders to which you have access on the various networked computers. To display particular resources connected to your network, follow these steps: 1. Click the Entire Network link in the Other Places section of the My Network Places navigation pane to display the different network services: Microsoft Terminal Services, Microsoft Windows Network, and Web Client Network. 2. Double-click the Microsoft Windows Network icon to display any workgroups or domains that have been created for your network. 3. Double-click the icon for the domain or workgroup you want to explore. Doing this displays the computers that are available as part of the selected domain or workgroup. 4. Double-click a particular computer icon to display all the shared resources available to that computer (including networked printers and shared folders and drives). 5. Click the icon for a particular shared resource and read the information displayed in the Details section of the navigation pane in the My Network Places window to get a description of the function in the window navigation pane.

20 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff You can display all of the networked printers and online faxes available to your computer by clicking the Printers and Faxes link in the Other Places section of the My Network Places navigation pane. Network connections In the standard LAN environment, your client computer is physically connected to the file server by cables connected to the network card and using an Ethernet or other network protocol to make the connection. For other computers in the office that aren t equipped with network cards or computers that aren t physically located in the office, you need to create other types of network connections. For example, if you have a computer that connects directly to another computer using a parallel or serial cable or that is equipped with an infrared port, you need to create a network connection for this type of direct linking. If you use a desktop computer at home and a laptop computer on the road (that needs to dial into the company s network), you would need to create a network connection for this kind of dial-up link. To create a new network connection for your computer, you need to follow these steps: 1. Open the My Network Places window by clicking the Start button and then clicking My Network Places on the Start menu. (If My Network Places does not appear on the Start menu, access it by clicking the My Network Places hyperlink under My Documents or My Computer. After you access it once or twice through one of these means, it should appear on the Start menu from now on.) 2. Click the View Network Connections hyperlink in the Network Tasks portion of the My Network Places navigation pane. 3. Click the Create a New Connection link in the Network Tasks portion of the Network Connections navigation pane to open the Network Connection Wizard and then click the Next button to bypass the Welcome screen. 4. Select the radio button for the type of connection you want to create: Connect to the Internet (to get connected to the Internet) Connect to the Network at My Workplace (to dial into a company local area network) Set Up an Advanced Connection (to connect directly to another computer using a parallel or serial cable or an

21 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 21 Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer 21 infrared port or to allow other computers to connect with your computer through the Internet, telephone line, or direct cable) Set Up a Home or Small Office Network (to connect a SOHO network) 5. Click the Next button and then select the type of connection to create before clicking the Next button again: Select Dial-up Connection or Virtual Private Network Connection when using the Connect to the Network of My Workplace option Select Accept Incoming Connections or Connect Directly to Another Computer (when using the Advanced Connection option) 6. Specify the information on exactly how the new network connection is to be made. Depending upon the type of connection you re making, you may have to supply the telephone number to dial, the IP address to connect to, or the type of cable to use. After specifying the information required in order to connect (and for some types of connections this requires specifying information in more than one dialog box), click the Next button. 7. In the Completing the Network Connection Wizard dialog box, enter the descriptive name you want to give the new network connection in the provided text box. To add a shortcut to this connection to your Windows desktop, click the Add a Shortcut to This Connection to My Desktop check box to add a check mark to it. 8. Click the Finish button to close the Network Connection Wizard and add the new network connection to the Network Connections portion of the My Network Places window. Click the Close button in the Network Connections portion of the My Network Places window when you re ready to close the My Network Places window and return to the Windows desktop. After creating a network connection, you can use it to get connected to your network or other computer by opening the My Network Places window, clicking the View Network Connections hyperlink in the navigation pane, and then double-clicking the connection icon. If you plan to use the network connection on a regular basis, be sure to click the Add a Shortcut to This Connection to My Desktop check box in the Network Connection Wizard s Completing the Network Connection Wizard dialog box. That way, you can always open a connection by simply double-clicking the connection shortcut on the Windows desktop.

22 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Network Places You can add shortcuts to the My Network Places window for any of the shared folders, Web share (special shared folders set up for Web servers running Microsoft Internet software), and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites to which you have access. To do this, follow these steps: 1. Open the My Network Places window by clicking the Start button on the Windows taskbar and then clicking My Network Places in the Start pop-up menu. 2. Click the Add a Network Place link at the top of the Network Tasks section of the My Network Places navigation pane to open the first dialog box of the Add Network Place Wizard and then click the Next button to move beyond the Welcome screen. 3. Make sure that Other Network Connection, Specify the Address of a Web Site, Network Location, or FTP Site is highlighted in the Service Providers list box and then click the Next button. 4. Type the location of the shared folder, Web share, or FTP site whose shortcut you want to add to the My Network Places window in the provided text box and then click the Next button. If you don t know how the blazes you go about doing this (each type of resource requires its own syntax: \\server\share for shared folders; for Web shared folders; and ftp://ftp.webaddress.com for FTP sites), click the Browse button to locate and open the folder or FTP site in the Browse For Folder dialog box. 5. Type a common (descriptive) name that Windows assigns to this shortcut in the text box provided and then click the Next button. In the Completing the Add Network Place Wizard dialog box, click the Finish button to close the wizard and open the shortcut. To close the wizard and return to the My Network Places window instead of opening the shortcut right away, click the Open This Network Place When I Click Finish check box to remove the check mark. After creating a network shortcut with this wizard, Windows adds a folder icon representing it to the My Network Places window. To open the shared folder, Web share, or FTP site, you only have to doubleclick the folder icon after opening the My Network Places window. Home Networking Wizard Microsoft Windows XP supports home networking (in fact, this is the only type of networking that the Home Edition of the operating

23 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 23 Copying (and Moving) Files and Folders 23 system supports). Home networking enables two or more home computers to share resources, such as a single printer, as well as allows the networked computers to share a single Internet connection. To set up your home network (assuming that each computer is equipped with a network adapter that is connected with the appropriate cable), you can use the Home Networking Wizard to configure your network. To start the Home Networking Wizard, open the My Network Places window by clicking the Start button and then clicking My Network Places on the Start menu and then click the Set Up a Home or Small Office Network hyperlink in the Network Tasks section of the My Network Places navigation pane. Although it is well beyond the scope of this book to give you detailed information on the ins and outs of setting up home networking, be aware that this wizard is full of hyperlinks buttons that open Help dialog boxes that are full of good background information. For example, in the second Home Networking Wizard dialog box, you see a Checklist for Creating a Home Network link that, when you click it, displays a Help dialog box displaying a checklist of the steps you should follow in designing and setting up the network. In addition to asking you questions about your computer and Internet connections, the Home Networking Wizard will check to make sure that your computer has the necessary Internet Connection Sharing software installed. (If not, you may need to have your Windows XP CD-ROM handy.) After you ve used the wizard to set up your home network, you can then use the My Network Places window as I describe in this section to check up on the shared resources. See also Browsing Web Pages in Part II. Copying (and Moving) Files and Folders Folder windows (such as My Documents and My Computer) are now equipped with copy and move hyperlinks that appear in the navigation panes when you select one or more files or folders. These links, which appear in the File or Folder Tasks sections of the respective navigation panes, change depending upon what items you ve selected: Move this File and Copy this File appear when you ve selected a single file icon. Move this Folder and Copy this Folder appear when you ve selected a single folder icon. Move the Selected Items and Copy the Selected Items appear when you ve selected multiple files or folder icons.

24 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff To use these links to move or copy the file(s) or folder(s) you ve selected, follow these steps: 1. Click the move or copy hyperlink in the File or Folder Tasks section of the window navigation pane to open the Move Items or Copy Items dialog box. 2. Use the outline of your computer components that appears in the main list box to select the folder where the selected files or folders are to be copied or moved. Click the plus-sign buttons to display folders on particular drives and within other folders. 3. When the name of the folder into which you want the selected items copied or moved is highlighted in the Move Items or Copy Items list box, click the Move or Copy buttons to have Windows make the copies or do the moves. Use the new copy and move hyperlinks to copy or move selected items to new folders that don t yet exist on your computer. To create a new (destination) folder into which to make the copies or do the moves, select the drive or folder in which the new folder is to appear in the outline in the list box of the Move Items or Copy Items dialog box. Then, click the Make New Folder button, type a name for the new folder, and press Enter. An icon for the newly created folder will appear in the outline, and you can then choose the Move or Copy button to have Windows copy or move the selected files to your new destination folder! See also Selecting Files and Folders later in this part for information about selecting files and folders in a window. Drag em up, drop em down You can also copy and move files and folders to new folders on your computer by using the technique known as drag-and-drop. The art of drag-and-drop is simplicity itself and requires only that you do the following:

25 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 25 Copying (and Moving) Files and Folders Select the object you want to copy or move. See Selecting Files and Folders later in this part for more on the techniques Windows XP provides for selecting objects with the mouse. 2. While continuing to hold down the mouse button, drag the object to a new location. 3. When you arrive at the desired location, release the mouse button to drop the object there. To copy files with drag-and-drop, follow these steps: 1. Open the window that contains the items you want to copy, as well as the window with the folder or disk to which you want to copy the items. 2. Select all the items you want to copy. You can do this by drawing a bounding box around the file icons when they all fit into a rectangular shape: Click somewhere in the white space outside of the icons and then drag in such a way as to enclose all the icons in a box. As you drag, a bounding box made up of dotted lines appears, enclosing and selecting the icons within those boundaries. 3. Hold down the Ctrl key as you drag the selected items to the folder to which you want to copy them. 4. When the destination folder icon is selected (that is, becomes highlighted), drop the selected items by releasing the mouse button. Note that when you drag files or folders from one drive to another, Windows XP automatically copies the files and folders rather than moves them. This means that you don t have to hold down the Ctrl key when you intend to copy them from one disk to another. This also means that you must still delete them from their original disk after making the copies if you need to free up their disk space. To use drag-and-drop to copy and move files, you need to have open both the folder with the files to be moved or copied and the one to which you intend to move or copy them. To help you in doing this, you need to set Windows so that each folder opens in a separate window. (Windows is preprogrammed to open each folder in the same window.) To do this, click Tools Folder Options on the window menu bar, click the Open Each Folder in Its Own Window radio button on the General tab, and then click OK. Drag-and-drop moving from folder to folder is great because it s really fast. This method does have a major drawback, however: It s pretty easy to drop your file icons into the wrong folder. Instead of panicking when you open what you thought was the destination folder and find that your files aren t there (!), locate them by using the Search feature; see Searching for Files and Folders later in this part.

26 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Using cut-and-paste Instead of turning to drag-and-drop, you can use the cut-and-paste method, the oldest way of moving and copying items in Windows. Cut-and-paste, as the name implies, involves two distinct processes. In the first, you cut or copy the selected files or folders to a special area of the computer memory known as the Windows Clipboard. In the second, you paste the item(s) saved on the Clipboard into the new file or folder. You can perform the cut, copy, and paste commands, like many of the everyday tasks in Windows XP, by either selecting commands on the menu bar or by using keyboard combination shortcuts. To move or copy files with cut-and-paste (using either method) follow these steps: 1. Open the My Documents or My Computer window and select the folder that holds the subfolders or files that you re moving or copying. 2. Select all the items to be copied and then click Edit Copy (or press Ctrl+C) to copy them or click Edit Cut or (press Ctrl+X) to move them. 3. In the My Documents or My Computer window, select the folder or disk to which you re moving or copying the selected folder or file items. 4. Click Edit Paste on the My Documents or My Computer window menu bar (or press Ctrl+V) to paste them into the destination folder. When using the cut-and-paste method to move or copy files or folders, keep in mind that you don t have to keep open the folder with the files or folders you re moving or copying during the paste part of the procedure. You can close this folder, open the folder to which you re moving or copying them, and then do the paste command. Just be sure that you don t use the Edit Copy or Edit Cut commands again in Windows XP until after you ve pasted these files and folders in their new location. Note that if all you want to do is back up some files from your hard drive to a floppy disk in drive A or B, you can do so with the Send To command. After selecting the files to copy, just right-click to open the shortcut menu attached to one of the file icons and then choose the correct floppy drive, such as Floppy (A) or (B), on the Send To menu. Oh, and one thing more: Don t forget to insert a diskette, preferably already formatted and ready to go, before you start this little operation.

27 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 27 Creating New Files and Folders You can create empty folders to hold your files and empty files to hold new documents of a particular type, right within Windows XP. To create an empty folder, follow these steps: 1. Open the folder in the My Documents or My Computer window in which the new folder is to appear. 2. Choose File New Folder from the window menu bar or New Folder on the window s shortcut menu. 3. Replace the temporary folder name (New Folder) by typing a name of your choosing and pressing Enter. You can also make a new folder in the My Documents and My Computer windows simply by clicking the Make a New Folder hyperlink in the Tasks section of their window s navigation panes. Creating a blank file To create an empty file that holds a certain type of information, follow these steps: 1. Open the folder in the My Documents or My Computer window where the new file is required. 2. Choose File New from the menu bar or New on the window shortcut menu. 3. Choose the type of file you want to create (such as Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation, Microsoft Excel Worksheet, Microsoft Word Document, Wave Sound, Text Document, or Briefcase, and so on) from the New submenu. 4. Replace the temporary filename (such as New Microsoft Word Document) by typing a name of your choosing and pressing Enter. You can use your freshly created icon to open its associated program. See Launching Programs later in this part. Create a new folder when you need to have a new place to store your files and other folders. Create an empty file when you want to create an empty file in a particular folder before you put something in it. Compressing files and folders Creating New Files and Folders 27 Short on disk space? You can now start conserving precious free space by creating compressed folders that automatically compress every file and folder that you put into it.

28 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Windows XP handles file compression in two ways, depending upon what type of file system your computer uses. If your computer uses the older FAT (File Allocation Table) or FAT32 file system, you create a new special type of compressed folder so that all the files that you put in the folder are automatically compressed. If your computer uses the new NTFS (as Windows NT File System) file system, you compress the folders and files after creating them; see Compressing NTFS files and folders later in this part for details on this method. So how can you tell which file system your computer uses? Well, if your computer is a new purchase that came with Windows XP already installed on it, chances are very good that the manufacturer formatted your computer s hard drive using the NTFS file system. If, however, you upgraded from an earlier version of Windows, such as Windows 98 or Windows Millennium Edition, chances are pretty good that your system is using the FAT or FAT32 file system (FAT32 was an improvement to the system introduced in Windows 98 and supported by Windows Millennium Edition). If you upgraded to Windows XP from Windows 95, I can guarantee that your system is using the FAT file system because Windows 95 didn t support FAT 32 and NTFS. However, you don t have to guess which system your computer is using as there is an easy way to tell. Open the My Computer window by clicking Start and then clicking My Computer. Next, right-click the hard drive icon and then click Properties on the shortcut menu. The Properties dialog box that appears lists the file format (FAT, FAT32, or NTFS) on the General tab after the heading File System. Compressing FAT files and folders To create a blank compressed folder on a FAT or FAT32 file system, you follow these steps: 1. Open the folder in the My Computer window where you want the new compressed folder to be. 2. Choose File New Compressed Folder. Windows creates a new folder icon (sporting a zipper to indicate its special zip-type compression abilities) that sports the temporary filename New Compressed (zipped) Folder. 3. Replace the temporary filename, New Compressed (zipped) Folder, by typing your own filename; then press Enter. You can also create a new compressed folder on the Windows desktop by right-clicking the desktop and then choosing New Compressed Folder on the shortcut menu. After creating a compressed folder, you can copy or move files and folders into it just as you would a regular file folder. As you copy or move files or folders, Windows XP compresses their contents. You can then copy compressed folders to removable media, such as

29 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 29 floppy diskettes and zip drives. You can also attach them to messages that you send over the Internet. Microsoft has even gone so far as to make the compression schemes that compressed folders use compatible with other compression programs. This means that you can send compressed folders to people who don t even use Windows (if you know any) and they can extract (decompress) their contents by using their favorite compression/decompression program. Note that Windows XP automatically appends the name you give a compressed folder with the.zip file extension to help identify the folder as containing zipped-up files. Program files that you place in compressed folders will run from right within them (simply by double-clicking its program icon) provided that the program doesn t depend upon any other files (such as those pesky.dll files or some sort of data files). If the programs in the compressed folder do depend upon these kinds of auxiliary files, you must first extract them before you can run the program. Also, be aware that when you open text or graphic documents stored in a compressed folder, they open in read-only mode. Before you, or anyone else, can edit such documents, they must be extracted from the folder. See Extracting files from a compressed folder later in this part for details. Encrypting a compressed folder Creating New Files and Folders 29 When your compressed folder contains files of a sensitive nature, you may want to encrypt the files (the Microsoft term that simply means password-protecting them) so that only those to whom you entrust the password can open them. Just be aware that you re out of luck if you encrypt the files in a compressed folder and then forget what password you assign. Keep in mind when assigning a password that it is case-sensitive (unlike Windows filenames), so it s not enough to remember just the letters in a password should you decide to get fancy and use a combination of uppercase and lowercase. With that in mind, you follow these steps to encrypt the files in a compressed folder: 1. Open the My Computer window with the compressed folder whose files you want to encrypt. 2. Select the compressed folder (remember, its icon should sport a zipper down the front) and then choose File Encrypt on the window s pull-down menu (or right-click the folder icon and choose Encrypt on its shortcut menu) to open the Encrypt dialog box. 3. Type your password in the Password text box, paying close attention to the case of each of the letters you enter.

30 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff 4. Press the Tab key and then type the same password in the Confirm Password text box, exactly as you did in the Password text box above. 5. Choose the OK button to assign the password to the compressed folder. If you don t replicate the password exactly, Windows displays an error message box informing you that the New and Confirm passwords don t match. You must then click the OK button and match the passwords in the Password and Confirm Password text boxes by retyping the entry in the Confirm Password text box. After encrypting the files in a compressed folder, each time you try to open any of them, the Password Needed dialog box appears, where you must correctly reproduce the password assigned to the files when encrypting the folder. Note, however that even after you correctly supply the password in this dialog box, the selected file still opens in read-only mode (the only way to open them for editing is to extract decompress them from the folder). Note, too, that any files that you add to a compressed folder after encrypting it are NOT password-protected. To assign a password to such files, you must first decrypt the compressed folder (that is, remove the password) and then re-encrypt it. To decrypt the encrypted files in a compressed folder, you follow these steps: 1. Open the My Computer window with the compressed folder whose files you want to decrypt. 2. Select the compressed folder (remember, its icon should sport a zipper down the front) and then choose File Decrypt on the window s pull-down menu (or right-click the folder icon and choose Decrypt on its shortcut menu) to open the Password Needed dialog box. 3. Enter the password assigned to the encrypted files in the Password text box and then choose the OK button. If you prefer, you can encrypt only particular files stored in a compressed folder. To do this, open the compressed folder in the browsing window and select the file (or files) to be encrypted. Next choose the File Encrypt command on the window pull-down menu and enter the password for the selected file(s) in the Password and Confirm Password text boxes in the Encrypt dialog box. It s hard enough remembering the password you assign to all the files in a compressed folder, let alone various passwords for individual files. If you go about assigning passwords to specific files,

31 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 31 Creating New Files and Folders 31 please, please be sure that you have a system (that you can remember) for which files get which password. Otherwise, you could have quite a nightmare on your hands when it comes time to open or extract the protected files. Extracting files from a compressed folder Because the files placed in a compressed folder automatically open in read-only mode, you may need to extract them (that is, decompress them) so that you can once again edit their contents. To extract files from a compressed folder, you follow these steps: 1. Open the My Computer window with the compressed folder whose files you want to extract. 2. Select the compressed folder (remember, its icon should sport a zipper down the front) and then choose File Extract All on the window s pull-down menu (or right-click the folder icon and choose Extract on its shortcut menu) to open the first dialog box of the Extract Wizard. 3. Replace the path and the filename of the compressed folder with the pathname of the folder in which you want to store the extracted (decompressed) files in the text box labeled Files will be extracted to this directory. To browse to the folder in which you want the extracted files copied, click the Browse button and then select the (destination) folder in the outline of your computer system and choose OK. To extract the files in their original compressed folder, don t replace the path and filename for the compressed folder that appears in this text box. Just be aware that the only way to recompress the files that you extract in the compressed folder is to first move them out of the folder and then move them back in! 4. (Optional) If the compressed folder contains encrypted files that use the same password and you want to extract them all, click the Password button (immediately below the Browse button) and then type the password in the next text box that appears. Note that if the compressed folder contains encrypted files that use different passwords or if you don t want all the encrypted files to be extracted, don t click the Password button in Step 4. Instead, go on to Step 5 and click the Next button. After you click this button, a Password Needed dialog box appears for the first encrypted file in the folder. Enter the file password in the Password text box and choose OK or click the Skip File button if you want to bypass the extraction of that file (or if you just can t come up with the correct password). 5. Click the Next button at the bottom of the first Extract Wizard dialog box to begin extracting the files.

32 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff As soon as Windows finishes extracting the files, the second Extract Wizard dialog box appears. 6. (Optional) If you want to have Windows open the folder with the extracted files right after you close the Extract Wizard, select the Show extracted files check box. 7. Click the Finish button to close the Extract Wizard dialog box. To extract only particular files from a compressed folder, open the compressed folder in one of the browsing windows, select the file or files to be extracted, and then choose the File Extract command on the window pull-down menu. See also Naming Files and Folders later in this part for information on naming new files and folders in Windows XP. Compressing NTFS files and folders To compress files and folders on a system that uses the NTFS file system, follow these steps: 1. Select the folder or file that you want to compress in the My Documents or My Computer window. 2. Right-click the folder or file icon and then click Properties at the end of the shortcut menu to open the Properties dialog box for the selected file or folder. 3. Click the Advanced button to open the Advanced Attributes dialog box. 4. Click the Compress Contents to Save Disk Space check box and then click OK to close the Advanced Attributes dialog box. 5. If you re compressing a folder, an alert box asking you to confirm your attribute changes appears with the Apply Changes to This Folder Only radio button selected. If you want to compress all subfolders and their files as well, click the Apply Changes to This Folder, Subfolders, and Files radio button before you click OK. 6. Click the Close button in the My Documents and My Computer windows to return to the Windows desktop. Note that if you compress a folder, all the files in that folder are compressed. Any new files that you place in the folder after compressing it are likewise automatically compressed. Note that you can encrypt NTFS files and folders to secure your files by selecting the Encrypt Contents to Secure Data check box in the Advanced Attributes dialog box. However, selecting this encryption check box automatically deselects the Compress Contents to Save Disk Space check box you can t both compress and encrypt a folder or file at the same time.

33 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 33 When you encrypt a folder, Windows displays an alert dialog box asking if you want to encrypt all of the subfolders and folders within it. Likewise, when you encrypt a single file, you receive an alert dialog box asking if you want to encrypt not only the file but the parent folder as well. When you encrypt a folder, all the files that you subsequently put into that folder are automatically encrypted. If, however, you move an encrypted file into an unencrypted folder, Windows removes the file encryption. Creating Shortcuts Shortcuts make it possible to open an object (a favorite document, folder, program, or Web page) directly from the desktop of your computer even when you have absolutely no idea how deep the object is buried on your computer or where it may be in cyberspace. In the following list, I give you the basic lowdown on shortcuts: Shortcuts can be located anywhere on your computer, but keep them right out in the open on the desktop so that you can get right at them. When you create a shortcut for an object, Windows creates an icon for it with a name like Shortcut to such and such. You can rename the shortcut to whatever name suits you, just as you can rename any file or folder in Windows (see Naming Files and Folders later in this part). You can always tell a shortcut icon from the regular icon because the shortcut icon contains a little box with a curved arrow pointing up to the right, like the Microsoft Word shortcut shown here. Shortcuts function just like their icon counterparts. They open the same way, and in the case of Printer shortcuts, you can drag a file to a Printer shortcut to print on the associated printer. Shortcuts to open stuff Creating Shortcuts 33 To create a shortcut for a folder, file, or program that resides locally on your computer and place the shortcut on the Windows XP desktop, follow these steps: 1. Select the icon of the file, folder, or application program in the My Documents or My Computer window for which you want to create a shortcut. 2. Choose File Create Shortcut or right-click the icon and then choose Create Shortcut from the icon shortcut menu.

34 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff 3. If Windows displays the error message Unable to create a shortcut here. Do you want the shortcut placed on the desktop?, choose Yes. If Windows doesn t give you this error message, it places the new shortcut in the currently open window. If you want the shortcut on the desktop, where you have constant access to it, drag the shortcut icon to any place on the desktop and release the mouse button. If you move the file, folder, or program icon after making a shortcut to it, Windows gets all confused and displays a Missing Shortcut message dialog box. It then attempts to find out where in the blazes you moved the now-hidden component. If Windows successfully locates the component on your computer, it repairs the shortcut link and opens the component. If it can t locate the moved component (and you know where it is), use the Browse button in the Missing Shortcut dialog box to open the missing component. After you do this, Windows repairs the shortcut path so that the Missing Shortcut dialog box doesn t bother you the next time you select the shortcut icon. You can instantly create a shortcut for any file, folder, or program icon by right-clicking the icon and then selecting Send To Desktop (create shortcut) on the item shortcut menu. As soon as you select this command, Windows creates a shortcut icon for the selected item and places it on the Windows desktop no matter where you happen to be at the time! If you re dealing with a really important shortcut on your desktop that you find yourself selecting all the darn time, you may want to assign a keystroke shortcut to it as well. To do this, right-click the shortcut icon on the desktop and then select Properties on the shortcut menu. Windows opens a Properties dialog box displaying the Shortcut Tab with the settings for that particular shortcut, similar to the one that follows:

35 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 35 Select the Shortcut Key text box (by clicking the cursor in it) and then type a single keyboard character (number, letter, or punctuation symbol) that you want to assign to the shortcut (this character replaces the default setting of none). This character then appears in the Shortcut key text box preceded by Ctrl+Alt+ (so that if you type the letter g, you see Ctrl+Alt+G). Click the OK button to close the Shortcut Properties dialog box. After that, you can open the shortcut simply by pressing (and holding down) the Ctrl plus Alt keys until you type the assigned character. Shortcuts to Web pages In addition to creating shortcuts to favorite files or folders on your computer, you can also create shortcuts to favorite Web pages on the Internet. To create a shortcut to a Web page, follow these two simple steps: 1. Open the Web page for which you want to make the shortcut in Internet Explorer 6 (see Browsing Web Pages in Part II for details). 2. Choose File Send Shortcut To Desktop on the Internet Explorer 6 pull-down menus. Internet shortcuts are indicated by the Web page icon (the E representing the Internet Explorer on top of a page) with the name of the shortcut below. When you double-click a Web page shortcut, Windows opens Internet Explorer, connects you to the Internet, and displays the target Web page. Customizing the Desktop Customizing the Desktop 35 The Windows desktop is the background against which all the action takes place. It contains the standard Recycle Bin icon as well as all the desktop shortcuts you create (see Creating Shortcuts earlier in this part for details). The Desktop shortcut menu, which you open by right-clicking any open area of the desktop (above the taskbar), contains the following commands, which enable you to customize the look and feel of the Windows XP desktop: Arrange Icons By: Enables you to arrange the desktop icons by Name, Size, Type, or by date Modified. Select Auto Arrange to let Windows XP decide how to arrange them (see Arranging and Sizing Icons in a Window earlier in this part) and Align to Grid to make the icons line up on an invisible grid. You can also click Show Desktop Items to hide and then show all the desktop icons and Lock Web Items on Desktop to prevent you from

36 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff inadvertently moving Web items that you download onto the desktop from the Internet (see Appearance and Themes in Part IV for details on downloading Web items onto the desktop). Refresh: Updates icons and Web items displayed on the desktop. Paste: Creates a shortcut to whatever document you re currently working on and pastes it onto the desktop. Paste Shortcut: Pastes whatever shortcut you ve cut or copied to the Clipboard. New: Creates an empty folder, a file of a particular type (such as an Excel file or Word document), or a new shortcut. Properties: Opens the Display Properties dialog box, where you can change display stuff, such as the video settings and windows color combinations (see Display in Part IV for details). Deleting Junk Because the whole purpose of working on computers is to create junk, you need to know how to get rid of unneeded files and folders to free space on your hard drive. To delete files, folders, or shortcuts, follow these steps: 1. Open the folder that holds the files or folders to be deleted in the My Documents or My Computer window. 2. Select all the files, folders, or shortcuts to be deleted. 3. Choose File Delete on the menu bar or press the Delete key. (You can also drag the selected items to the Recycle Bin.) 4. Choose the Yes button in the Confirm File Delete dialog box that asks whether you want to send the selected items to the Recycle Bin. Windows XP puts all items that you delete in the Recycle Bin. The Recycle Bin is the trashcan for Windows XP. Anything you delete anywhere in Windows goes into the Recycle Bin and stays there until you either retrieve the deleted item or empty the Recycle Bin. Note that the Recycle Bin icon is a permanent item on the Windows desktop. To open this window, you simply double-click the icon on the desktop. Use the following tips to work efficiently with the Recycle Bin: To fill the Recycle Bin: Select the folders or files you no longer need and drag their icons to the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop and drop them in.

37 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 37 Deleting Junk 37 To rescue stuff from the Recycle Bin: Open the Recycle Bin and then select the icons for the items you want to restore before you click the Restore this Item hyperlink (if only one item is selected) or the Restore the Selected Items hyperlink (if multiple items are selected). These hyperlinks are found in the navigation pane that appears on the left side of the window. Note that you can also select File Restore on the pull-down menu to remove the selected item or items. You can also drag the icons for the files and folders you want to save out of the Recycle Bin and drop them in the desired location. To rescue all the stuff in the Recycle Bin: Open the Recycle Bin and click the Restore All Items hyperlink in the navigation pane of the Recycle Bin window. Note that this link is replaced by the Restore This Item or the Restore the Selected Items hyperlinks when you select one or more items. To empty the Recycle Bin: Open the Recycle Bin and click the Empty Recycle Bin hyperlink in the navigation pane of the Recycle Bin window or choose File Empty Recycle Bin from the menu bar. You can also empty it by right-clicking the Recycle Bin icon and choosing Empty Recycle Bin from the icon shortcut menu. Keep in mind that choosing the Empty Recycle Bin command immediately gets rid of everything in the Recycle Bin dialog box. Don t ever empty the Recycle Bin until after you examine the contents and are absolutely sure that you ll never need to use any of those items ever again. Delete items in the Recycle Bin only when you re sure that you re never going to need them again (or you ve backed up the files on diskettes or some other media, such as tapes or CD-ROMs).

38 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff If you hold down the Shift key when you press the Delete key, Windows displays a Confirm File Delete dialog box that asks whether you want to delete the selected file or files rather than whether you want to send the files to the Recycle Bin. Click the Yes button or press Enter to delete the selected items. Formatting a Disk In this day and age when floppy disk drives are rarely included in new computer systems, most of you will never experience the joy of formatting a floppy disk. For the rest of you who do have floppy drives on your computers and occasionally find a need to back up or transmit files on floppy disks, this section will come in handy. Most all of the diskettes you purchase today are preformatted (this is done as part of the automated process that checks the disks for errors). Every once in a while, you may get a box of disks at an incredibly good price that are unformatted. You must format such diskettes before you can save files and folders on them. To format a diskette in drive A of your computer, follow these steps: 1. Insert a blank diskette or a diskette that holds files and folders that you don t give a hoot about. 2. Open the My Computer window and then right-click the icon for the Floppy Drive (A:). 3. Select the Format command from the A drive shortcut menu to open the Format Floppy dialog box.

39 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 39 Formatting a Disk By default, Windows XP selects high density 3.5", 1.44MB 512 bytes/sector as the Capacity for the size of the diskette you re formatting. Choose the lesser (double-density) capacity 3.5", 720KB 512 bytes/sector if you inserted that kind of diskette into your floppy drive. 5. By default, Windows XP selects the FAT in the File System pulldown text box as the file system for which to format the diskette. (This is a system supported by Windows 95, Windows for Workgroups, MS-DOS, and OS/2.) You also have a choice of selecting FAT32 as the file system (supported by Windows XP, Me, 98, and Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2) or selecting NTFS (supported by Windows XP and Windows 2000). If you select NTFS as the file system, you can also select the Enable Compression check box in the Format Options section so that you can store more data on the diskette. Don t select NTFS as the file system option if the diskette is to be used on systems that also runs Windows 95, 98, or Me because these can t access files stored in this format. 6. (Optional) Type a label in the Volume Label text box if you want to attach a name to the disk that you can use to identify it. When you format by using the FAT system, you re restricted to 11 characters; when you re using the NTFS system, you re limited to a maximum of 32 characters. 7. (Optional) Click the Quick Format check box in the Format Options (if you re reformatting a disk that contains files and folders that you no longer need). If you re formatting a brand new diskette, leave this check box empty. 8. Click the Start button to begin formatting the disk and then click OK in the alert dialog box warning you that formatting erases all data currently on the disk. After you click Start, Windows keeps you informed of the progress in the Formatting box at the bottom of the Format dialog box. If you need to stop the process before it s complete, click the Cancel button. When the diskette formatting is finished, click the OK button in the alert dialog box informing you that the formatting is complete and then click the Close button or press Enter to close the Format dialog box. If you want to format another diskette of the same type, replace the newly formatted diskette with another that needs formatting and click the Start button (or press Enter) to begin formatting it. Be sure to match the capacity setting to the physical type of disk you re using: double-density 3.5", 720KB 512 bytes/sector or highdensity 3.5", 1.44 MB 512 bytes/sector.

40 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff You can also format a brand-new, never-been-formatted, right-outof-the-box diskette by inserting it in the disk drive and then opening the drive icon in the My Computer window. Windows XP displays an alert box containing this message: The disk in drive A is not formatted. Do you want to format it now? Click the Yes button or press Enter to open the Format dialog box, in which you can specify the disk capacity, file system, label, and so on before you start the formatting by clicking the Start button. Getting Help and Support Windows XP has an extensive help system that you can use not only to get general and detailed information on how to use Windows but also to get answers from Microsoft on specific problems that you re experiencing. As in Windows 98 and Millennium Edition, Windows XP Help is an HTML document with hyperlinks that you can use to Search for help topics by keywords. Get help on specific topics by clicking hyperlinks such as the Windows Basics and Customizing Your Computer links. Get assisted support by connecting to the Microsoft Web site where you can report any problems that you experience as well as check out the status of any previously reported problems. You can even get a technician to remotely take control of your computer so that he can diagnose and troubleshoot the problem. View system information and run diagnostic utilities so that you can troubleshoot your system. To open Windows XP Help, click the Start button on the Windows taskbar and then click Help and Support. Windows opens the Home page in the Help and Support Services window, as shown in the following figure. This Home page contains a number of hyperlinks, such as the What s New in Windows XP and Customizing Your Computer links, that you can click to get quick information about particular topics.

41 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 41 Getting Help and Support 41 Here are some of things you can do from the Help Home page: To search for help on a particular topic, click the cursor in the Search text box at the top of the page, type your topic, and then press Enter or click the Search button. Windows returns a results page with a list of matching (or, at the very least, somewhat related topics) in the left pane. To display information on a particular topic in the frame on the right, click that hyperlink. To find a help topic in the Help index, click the Index button on the toolbar at the very top of the page. Enter the first few characters of the subject you want help on in the Type in the Keyword to Find text box to scroll to that subject in the index below. When Windows displays the topic you re interested in, click the topic to select it and then click the Display button at the bottom or double-click the topic to display the information in the frame on the right. To take a tour of Windows, click the What s New in Windows XP hyperlink and then click the Taking a Tour or Tutorial link in the Explore Windows navigation pane. Finally, click the Take the Windows XP Tour or the Take the Windows Media Player Tour link that then appears in the main part of the window. To get help on fixing a problem that you re having with your computer, click the Get Support or Find Information in Windows XP Newsgroups link on the right side of the Home page or click the Support button on the toolbar. Click the Get Help from Microsoft hyperlink and then sign in with your Hotmail logon (see Browsing with MSN Explorer in Part II for details).you

42 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff can then select from three more links that appear in the main part of the window: Click the Ask a Microsoft Professional For Help link to submit a problem you must choose between No- Charge Support and Paid Professional Support (at $195 per incident) prior to submitting this problem; the Check the Latest Response to a Problem link to get feedback on a problem you submitted; or the Make This Machine Visible to Microsoft link to make your computer visible to someone at Microsoft who can then guide you through the steps to fixing a problem that you ve submitted (by using the first option). To get information on your computer system, click the Use Tools to View Your Computer Information and Diagnose Problems link on the Home page and then click the Advanced System Information hyperlink in the Tools Center navigation pane. This brings up five different hyperlink choices in the pane on the right: the View Detailed System Information, View Running Services, View Group Policy Settings Applied, View the Error Log, and View Computer Information for Another Computer links (this last link works only if you re on a network and you have administrative permissions). To run diagnostic tests on your system, click the Use Tools to View Your Computer Information and Diagnose Problems link on the Home page and then click the Systems Configuration Utility link. Click the Open System Configuration Utility link that then appears in the pane on the right and then designate the type of test to run on the General tab of the System Configuration Utility dialog box. To return a previously viewed help page, click the Back button (<<) at the top of the Help window. To then return to the page from which you came, click the Forward (>>) button. To add a help topic to the Favorites section of the Help system (so that you can return to the topic by clicking the Favorites button and then clicking a hyperlink to the topic), click the Add to Favorites button on the toolbar that appears above the help information. To print the help topic displayed in the frame on the right, click the Print button on the toolbar that appears above the help information. Getting Info on a Disk, Folder, or File Windows XP gives you at-a-glance information about any drive, folder, or file you select in the navigation panes of the My Computer and Windows Explorer windows. When you select a disk

43 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 43 drive, the navigation pane shows you total capacity of the drive with a pie chart showing the used and free space. When you select a folder, Windows shows the name of the folder and the date and time when it was last modified. When you select a file, Windows shows the filename, file type, date and time last modified, the size (in KB), the file attribute, and, if it s a graphic file of a type that Windows can deal with, a thumbnail image. You can also get some of this same type of information about a particular drive, folder, and file plus additional details by opening that Properties dialog box. Just open a browsing window with the drive, folder, or file that you want the lowdown on and then right-click that icon. Select the Properties command from the shortcut menu. Disk properties Getting Info on a Disk, Folder, or File 43 Disk properties include a wide array of statistics on the hard drive along with tools for keeping it running at maximum. The following figure shows the Properties dialog box for my computer s hard drive. The (C:) Properties dialog box contains the following tabs and information: General: Shows you the name (or label) of the hard drive, the type of file system (FAT, FAT32, or NTFS), the amount of used and free space on the drive, and the drive total storage capacity (topped off with a great big pie chart just like you see in the navigation pane, only in nicer colors). This tab also includes a Disk Cleanup button that you can use to free up disk space by deleting unused files and, under the NTFS files system, a Compress Drive to Save Disk Space check box that you can check to free up disk space by compressing the files on the drive.

44 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Tools: Contains a Check Now button for checking the hard drive for errors, a Defragment Now button to rearrange the files on the drive in contiguous blocks (see System Tools in Part III for more on using these utilities), and a Backup Now to run the backup utility for making backup copies of your files and folders. Hardware: Shows you a list of the various drives on your system arranged by type (floppy, hard, and CD-ROM) with the name of the manufacturers. Sharing: Contains options for sharing your hard drive on a Local Area Network (Share Name), specifying how many users can share the drive (User Limit), and setting the type of access (Permissions), and to specify how the files on the drive are cached on the user s computer when they re connected to the network (Caching). Security: Shows you a list of all the groups or users who have access to the shared drive along with a list of their particular permissions. Quota: Enables you to set up disk quotas that control how many users can be sharing the drive at the same time and to allocate the maximum amount of disk space for the users. Folder properties You can also use the Properties command to get information on individual folders on your hard drive. The Properties dialog box contains a General tab, Customize tab, and a Security tab. If your computer is on a LAN, the Properties dialog box also contains a Sharing tab see Security and Sharing in the list of Disk Properties for details and a Web Sharing tab.

45 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 45 The General tab in a folder Properties dialog box tells you the folder name, the location, size in bytes, the number of folders and files contained within the folder, last modified date, and the folder attributes, which can be Read-only, Archive, Hidden, and System. The Web Sharing tab contains options for sharing the folder on a company Web site located on a corporate intranet or the World Wide Web (Internet). Customizing a folder The Customize tab in the Properties dialog box enables you to change the appearance of a folder. When customizing the look of a folder, you can select a picture that Windows displays on the folder when the Thumbnails view is turned on; see Arranging and Sizing Icons in a Window earlier in this part for details. You can also change the icon that Windows uses to represent the folder when you view a window in any other view besides Thumbnails (Tiles, Icons, List, and Details). To select a new picture for Thumbnails view, click the Choose Picture button and then select the image file to use in the Browse dialog box. Remember that you can select a picture in the My Pictures folder by clicking the My Documents button on the left and then double-clicking My Pictures that then appears in the main list box. To select a new icon for all the other views, click the Change Icon button and then click the desired icon in the Select an Icon from the List Below list box before you click OK. File properties Getting Info on a Disk, Folder, or File 45 The Properties dialog box for a file contains a General tab, a Security tab (see Security in the disk properties list in the Disk Properties section earlier in this part for details), and a Summary tab. The General tab in the file Properties dialog box tells you the Windows XP filename, file type, file location, size in bytes, creation date, last edited (modified) date, last opened (accessed) date, and the file attributes, which can be Read-only, Archive, Hidden, and System. Please don t fool with the attributes unless you re certain that you know what you re doing. The Summary tab contains a list of fields for various attributes, such as the Title, Subject, Author, Category, Keywords, and Comments that you can fill out. The information that you fill in on the Summary tab you can later use in searching for the file; see Searching for Files and Folders later in this part for details.

46 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff To fill in an attribute on the Summary tab, click the attribute text box and then fill in the appropriate information for use in searching for the file. Click the Advanced button to display the summary information in an outline view. When you put the Summary tab in advanced view, you can view the attributes, but you can t modify them. To make changes, you have to click the Simple button and then click the text box of each attribute you want to change. Launching Programs In Windows XP, you can open the programs that you ve installed on your hard drive in any one of the following three ways: Select the program on the Programs menu, which you open from the Start menu: See Using the Windows Taskbar later in this part for information about starting programs from the Start menu and manually adding items to or removing them from the Programs menu. Open a shortcut to the program or to a document you open regularly: See Creating Shortcuts earlier in this part for information about creating shortcuts for opening a program or a file that in turn opens the associated program. Open a file created with the program: See Creating New Files and Folders earlier in this part for information about opening a program by opening the file. Keep in mind that older programs designed for previous versions of Windows may not launch successfully under Windows XP. If you

47 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 47 Launching Programs Moving and Resizing Windows 47 try to launch an older program and it fails to start, try running the program in the Windows XP Compatibility Mode; see Running Programs in Compatibility Mode later in this part for details. You can also launch programs by adding buttons for them to the Quick Launch toolbar on the taskbar and then clicking those buttons. See The Quick Launch toolbar later in this part for details. Moving and Resizing Windows Windows, whether they re Windows system types (such as the My Documents, My Computer, or Control Panel windows) or program windows (such as the NetMeeting or WordPad program windows), contain various combinations of controls and features that you use to modify the window and, in the case of program windows, navigate a program. The following list describes the features and controls found on all your typical windows: Title bar: Identifies the program or file in the opened window; also houses the Control menu, which appears when you click the program icon on the left side of the Title bar. Menu bar: Contains the pull-down menus with commands specific to a program; see The menu bar later in this part. Minimize button: Shrinks the window down to a button on the taskbar. Maximize button: Zooms the window up to full size; to restore a maximized window to its former size, click the Restore Down button that replaces the Maximize button. Close button: Closes the window and exits any program running in it. Toolbars: If the window is equipped with other toolbars (such as a Standard Buttons bar), these extra toolbars are usually located below the menu bar. Vertical scroll bar: Enables you to vertically scroll new parts of the window into view with the up and down arrows or by dragging the scroll button. Horizontal scroll bar: Enables you to horizontally scroll new parts of the window into view with the right and left arrows or by dragging the scroll button. Status bar: Gives you different sorts of information about the current state of the program.

48 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Here are some basic tips on dealing with the windows you encounter in Windows XP: A window must be active before you can select any of the commands or use any of the features. To activate a window, click anywhere on it. The active window is immediately placed on top of the desktop and the title bar becomes highlighted. You can change the size of a window by dragging the borders with the mouse or by using the Size command. To move a window on the desktop, position the mouse pointer somewhere on the window title bar and drag the outline to the new location with the mouse. If the window contains a toolbar and you don t have a clue as to what the tool does, point to the tool button, and Windows displays a ScreenTip with the tool name. You can move windows around the desktop and resize them from full-screen (called maximized) all the way down to wee buttons on the taskbar (called minimized) at your convenience. To move a window, follow these steps: 1. If necessary, restore the window to an in-between size, either by clicking the Restore Down button if the window is maximized or by clicking the taskbar button if the window is minimized. 2. Position the mouse pointer over the window title bar. 3. Drag the outline of the window to the new location on the desktop. 4. Release the mouse button to drop the window in the new location on the desktop. To maximize a window, you have two methods to choose from: Click the Maximize button on the window title bar if the window is displayed at less than full size. (The Maximize button is located in the middle of the three buttons on the right side of the title bar.) Otherwise, click the window taskbar button if the window is minimized. Choose Maximize from the window Control menu (which you open by clicking the program icon in the far left of the window title bar). Remember that after you maximize a window, you can restore the window to the original size by doing one of these two things: Click the Restore Down button on the window title bar. (The Restore button is located in the middle of the three buttons on the right side of the title bar.)

49 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 49 Choose Restore from the window Control menu (which you open by clicking the program icon in the far left of the window title bar). To minimize a window to just a button on the taskbar, you can do either of the following: Click the Minimize button on the window title bar. (The Minimize button is the one with the minus sign, located on the left of the three buttons on the right side of the title bar.) Choose Minimize from the window Control menu (which you open by clicking the program icon in the far left of the window title bar). In addition to using the automatic sizing controls, you can manually size a window (assuming that it s not currently minimized or maximized) by dragging any of the sides or corners. You can always tell when Windows XP will allow you to move one or more of the sides of a window by dragging because the mouse pointer changes from the standard pointer to a double-headed arrow. Keep the following points in mind to get the most out of resizing windows while you work: Move a window whenever something else (such as the taskbar or another window) gets in the way so that you can t see the window contents. Maximize a window when you re doing some serious work (or playing) in that window and don t need the distraction of all the other junk that populates the Windows XP desktop. Minimize a window when you still need it open (especially when it s running processes, such as printing or calculating, in the background) but won t be directly using those features for a while. Keep the window sized in between when you need to see part of those contents on the desktop at the same time as you re doing something else (as when moving or copying with drag-and-drop). See Control menus later in this part for information on how to use the Control menu to size and move windows. Naming Files and Folders Naming Files and Folders 49 Files contain all the precious data that you create with those sophisticated (and expensive) Windows-based programs. Files occupy a certain amount of space (rated in kilobytes [K], which is Greek for thousands of bytes) on a particular disk, be it your hard drive or a removable floppy disk.

50 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff The location of a file (the pathname) is identified by the letter of the drive that holds the disk, the folder or subfolders within which it s embedded, and a unique filename. A typical pathname could look like this: C:\Accounts\Payables\invoice 0215.xls This pathname is shorthand to indicate that a file named invoice 0215.xls is located in a folder named Payables, which is itself located in a folder called Accounts, which is, in turn, located on drive C (the hard drive) of your computer. Folders are the data containers in Windows XP. They can contain files or other folders or a combination of files and folders. Like files, folders occupy a certain amount of space (rated in kilobytes [K], indicating the size of the data files it holds) on a particular disk, be it your hard drive or a removable floppy disk. The location of a folder (known in Techese as the folder directory path) is identified by the letter of the drive that holds the disk, the other folder or folders within which it s embedded, and a unique name. The following is an example of a Workstuff folder directory path, which indicates that Workstuff is a subfolder within the My Documents folder on drive C: C:\My Documents\Workstuff You can locate folders on a disk in the My Documents and My Computer windows; see Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer, earlier in this part. To find out more about the ins and outs of folders in Windows XP, see also Creating New Files and Folders, Copying (and Moving) Files and Folders, and Deleting Junk, all earlier in this part. Long filenames Each filename in Windows consists of two parts: a main filename and a file extension. The file extension, which identifies the type of file and what program created it, consists of a maximum of three characters that are automatically assigned by the creating agent or program. Typically, these file extensions aren t displayed in the lists of filenames that you see. For information on how to display the file extensions, see Opening Files and Folders later in this part. Whereas the creating program normally assigns the file extension, Windows XP enables you to call the main part of the filename whatever the heck you want, up to a maximum of 255 characters (including spaces!). Keep in mind, however, that all pre-windows 95 programs, and even some that run on Windows 98, don t support long filenames. These programs allow a maximum of only eight characters, with no spaces.

51 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 51 File icons Naming Files and Folders 51 In Windows XP, files are assigned special icons along with the filenames. These icons help you quickly identify the type of file when you re browsing the files in your folders in My Documents, My Computer, or Internet Explorer 6. The following table shows some examples of these icons: File Icon File Type and Program That Opens It Movie Maker Program file that runs the Movie Maker program on your computer Word document that will open in Word for Windows Excel workbook that will open in Excel for Windows Text file that will open in Notepad utility HTML document that will open in Internet Explorer 6 Unidentified generic file that will open the Open With dialog box, which asks you to identify a program that can open the file Things you do with files A few things you will inevitably do with files (in no particular order) are the following: Open a file (and, if necessary, the program that created it, if that program is identifiable) by double-clicking or highlighting and then clicking the file icon, depending on the Folder Options settings you specify. See Opening Files and Folders later in this part for details on customizing the click settings. Print files (via the associated program) by dragging the file icons to a printer in the Printer folders or to a printer shortcut on the desktop.

52 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Move or copy files by dragging the file icons to new folders. See Copying (and Moving) Files and Folders earlier in this part for details. Get rid of files (and free the space they re taking up) when they re no longer of any use to you by selecting those icons and pressing the Delete key or by dragging the icons to the Recycle Bin; see Deleting Junk earlier in this part for details. As in earlier versions of Windows, you can create shortcuts to file locations in Windows XP to quickly access frequently used files, folders, or Web pages; see Creating Shortcuts earlier in this part for details. Also, keep in mind that you can get lots of good information on a file, such as which program created it, how big it is, when it was created and last revised, and so on, by choosing the Properties command on the file shortcut menu. For details, see Getting Info on a Disk, Folder, or File, earlier in this part. Renaming files and folders You can rename file and folder icons directly in Windows XP by typing over or editing the existing file or folder name as I outline in these steps: 1. Open the My Documents or My Computer window that contains the folder or file you want to rename. 2. Right-click the file or folder icon and select Rename on the shortcut menu. 3. Type the new name that you want to give the folder (up to 255 characters) or edit the existing name. You can use the Delete key to remove characters and the or key to move the cursor without deleting characters. 4. When you finish editing the file or folder name, press the Enter key to complete the renaming procedure. When the file or folder name is selected for editing, typing anything entirely replaces the current name. If you want to edit the file or folder name rather than replace it, you need to click the insertion point at the place in the name that needs editing before you begin typing. Opening Files and Folders The most common way to open a file or folder is to open that icon in the My Documents or My Computer windows. See Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer earlier in this part for details.

53 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 53 Opening Files and Folders 53 How you open the file or folder icon after you have it displayed in a browsing window depends on the Folder Options settings that your computer uses: Single-click the icon when you ve selected the Single-click to Open an Item (Point to Select) option in the Folder Options dialog box for single-clicking to open and mousing over to select. Double-click the icon when you use the Double-click to Open an Item (Single-click to Select) option in the Folder Options dialog box for double-clicking to open and single-clicking for selecting. Note that this is the default way of doing things in Windows unless you ve changed this setting in the Folder Options dialog box (Tools Folder Options). Remember that you can also open a file or folder by right-clicking that icon and then choosing the Open command at the top of the shortcut menu. Traditionally, graphical user interfaces (known affectionately as GUIs), such as Windows, use the following mouse-click scheme to differentiate between selecting and opening the icon: Single-click the icon to select it (indicated on-screen by highlighting the icon and the filename or folder name). Double-click the icon to open that object. See File icons in the preceding section for details on the different types of Windows objects. Hyperlinks, made popular on Web pages on the World Wide Web, however, use a slightly different mouse-click scheme to differentiate between selecting and following (the equivalent of opening) the links, which can be attached to graphics or text on the page: Move the mouse pointer over the hyperlink to select it (indicated by the mouse pointer changing to the hand icon). Click (don t double-click) the hyperlink to follow the link. (Normally, following the link means to jump to another section of the page or to open a completely different Web page.) In Windows XP, you can choose between selecting and opening Windows icons the normal GUI way (single- and double-click) or the normal Web way (point at and click). When Windows XP is first installed on your computer, the traditional GUI single- and double-click scheme is in effect. If you want to switch over and experiment with the Web point-and-click system, you can do so at any time by making the following modifications to the Folders Options:

54 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff 1. Click the Start button on the taskbar and then click My Computer to open the My Computer window (you can also do this from the My Documents window). 2. Choose Tools Folder Options on the window menu bar to open the Folder Options dialog box. 3. Click the Single-click to Open an Item (Point to Select) radio button near the bottom of the dialog box. 4. (Optional) By default, Windows underlines icon titles at all times. If you only want the titles underlined when you mouse over them, click the Underline Icon Titles Only When I Point at Them radio button. 5. Click the OK button to close the Folder Options dialog box and put your new single-click settings in effect. See also Selecting Files and Folders later in this part for information about selecting files and folders after the folder is open. Playing Music, Video, and Movies Windows XP includes Windows Media Player for playing music and videos on your computer. You use Windows Media Player to play audio or video CD-ROMs saved on your computer (or, if you have a fast enough connection, audio or video as it is being downloaded to your computer from a site on the World Wide Web), MP3 music files, or even DVD discs (the newest format for feature-length movies that can include not only the film but also special interactive clips, such as outtakes and trailers) if your computer is equipped with a special DVD drive. Windows Media Player You can use Windows Media Player to play audio, video, and animation files that you either save on your computer or (if you have a fast connection to the Internet, also known as broadband) play online as they re being downloaded to your computer (a technique known as streaming). This means that you can use Windows Media Player to play Internet radio stations as well as to view video clips from trailers from upcoming movies. Of course, the most important thing is that Windows Media Player also plays all the MP3 (short for MPEG3, which is the latest compression schemed used by the Motion Picture Entertainment industry) audio files that you ve bootlegged I mean, downloaded from your favorite music Web sites. You re able to view Windows Media Player in one of two modes: full mode (Ctrl+1) and compact mode (Ctrl+2). Full mode (shown in the following figure) is the default.

55 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 55 Playing Music, Video, and Movies 55 When you use Windows Media Player in full mode, it displays a taskbar on the left side of the player that contains a number of buttons that you can use to switch between the types of media that you re playing and to control how you view and play them: Now Playing: When playing audio, this default mode represents the pattern of sounds being played visually as waves of particles. When playing a video file, the video appears centered in the Windows Media Player screen. Media Guide: Click the Media Guide button to find music and videos to play with Windows Media Player. When you click this button, Windows connects you to the WindowsMedia.com Web site, where you can locate and download all sorts of audio and video files. Copy from CD: Click the Copy from CD button to display the tracks of the audio CD that you ve placed into your computer CD-ROM drive. To play a particular track on the CD, doubleclick the description in the track list. To copy the tracks from the CD onto your hard drive, click the Copy Music button at the top of the Media Player. Media Library: Click the Media Library button to display an outline with all the audio and video media files on your hard drive. If you copied tracks from audio CDs (by using the Copy Music button in the Copy from view), you can play these tracks by double-clicking them in the Media Library list. If you ve created presets to various online radio stations, you can connect to the stations by double-clicking the presets in this view.

56 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Radio Tuner: Click the Radio Tuner button to play any of the preset online radio stations, to search for new radio stations, or to create or edit the lists of preset stations. Copy to CD or Device: Click the Copy to CD or Device button to copy the music you re playing to a recordable CD-ROM drive or a particular portable device (such as HP Jornada 520 or Compaq ipaq Pocket PC) that s connected to your computer. Skin Chooser: Click the Skin Chooser button to select a new appearance (skin) for Windows Media Player. In this mode, you can select from any of the included skins or you can download new skins from the Web. Audio CD-ROMS With a CD-ROM drive, a sound card, and some cool speakers, you can listen to music while you work. Today s CD-ROM drives can play both audio CDs (compact discs) as well as CD-ROMs with multimedia programs, such as encyclopedias and games, games, games. To play a favorite audio compact disc in your CD-ROM player with Windows Media Player, follow these steps: 1. Insert the CD (the shiny side with rainbows and no writing) face down in the CD-ROM drive. 2. When you close the door on the CD-ROM drive, Windows reads information that tells it that the CD is of the audio (compact disc) type rather than the data (CD-ROM) type, and then Windows automatically opens Windows Media Player in full mode (as shown in the previous figure). If the CD Player window doesn t automatically open when you pop an audio CD into your CD-ROM drive, click the Start button and then click All Programs Accessories Entertainment Windows Media Player to jump-start the window. After the CD starts playing in Now Playing mode in the Media Player, you can pause it by clicking the pause button (the one with two vertical bars). To restart the CD, click the play button (the one with the triangle pointing to the right that replaces the Pause button). If you want to stop the CD, click the Stop button (the one with the square). Note that you can control the volume for the CD Player by dragging the vertical volume control (appearing in the triangle that looks like a ramp to the right of the Stop button). Drag this control to the right (to increase the volume) or to the left (to decrease the volume). To temporarily mute the player, click the mute button (the tiny button with the picture of the speaker to the immediate left of the volume control). To turn off the mute, just click the mute button a second time.

57 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 57 Playing Music, Video, and Movies 57 When playing the disc in the Copy to CD mode, you can do any of the following things to enhance your listening enjoyment: If you have a connection to the Internet available and you want to get a playlist with the names of the songs on the disc, do this: 1. Click the Get Names button to the immediate right of the Copy Music button on the toolbar above the track list. 2. Then click the Confirm button when the track information for the album appears in the Media Player window. 3. If the search happens to return the wrong information, click the Find Album button and then click Next. 4. Type the name of the artist in the Search for Artist text box that appears and click Next again. 5. After the artist has been located, click the name of the album that you re playing in the Choose Album list box. 6. Click Finish when the playlist appears to return to the normal CD Audio view in Windows Media Player. To display liner note-type information about the album and the artist, you can click the Album Details button. To copy the disc that s playing onto your hard drive (starting with the track that s currently playing), click the Copy Music button. When playing the disc in the Now Playing mode, you can do any of the following things to enhance your listening enjoyment: To select the next variation of the current type of visual representation of the music shown Windows Media Player window, click the Next Visualization button (the one with the triangle pointing right that appears immediately left of the name of the visualization). To select the previous variation, click the Previous Visualization button (the one with the triangle pointing left). To select a new type of visualization with a new set of variations, click the Select Visualization button (the button with the * to the left of the Next and Previous Visualization buttons) and then click the name of the desired visualization in the pop-up menu. To download new visual representations from the Microsoft media Web site, choose Tools Download Visualizations on the Windows Media Players pull-down menus. Note that when viewing variations of the Ambience type of visualization, you can view this representation full-screen: just click the View Full Screen button that appears on the right side underneath the Windows Media Player window. To return the screen to normal after making the Ambience visualization full screen, click the mouse anywhere on the screen.

58 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff To display the SRS Wow Effects that add bass and generally enhance the depth of your speakers, select View Now Playing Tools SRS WOW Effects on the Media Player menu bar. To turn on the effect, click the Off button. If your computer has large separate speakers, click the Next Speaker button (the round button currently identified Normal Speakers) until it reads Large Speakers. If you re listening to the music with headphones, click the Next Speaker Size button until it reads Headphones. To adjust the base, drag the TrueBass slider to the left or right. To enhance the stereo effect, drag the WOW Effect slider until the sound is optimized. To display a graphic equalizer in a pane at the bottom of Windows Media Player that enables you to tweak the sound, select View Now Playing Tools Graphic Equalizer on the Media Player menu bar. To select a new preset, click the dropdown button attached to the Select Preset button (the small round one immediately below the On button identified as Custom) and then click the preset you want on the pop-up menu. To customize one of the presets even further, drag the various sliders up and down until you re happy with the sound. By default, the sliders are set to move together in a loose group. To move them in a tight group, click the Set Equalizer Sliders to Move in a Tight Group button (the third button in the group to the left of the sliders that is immediately above the Select View button). To move the sliders independently, click the Set Equalizer Sliders to Move Independently button (the one at top of the group of three to the left to the sliders themselves). To display the track list (or playlist, if you downloaded this information) in a pane on the right side of the Windows Media Player screen, click the Show Playlist in Now Playing button (the third button of the three small buttons that appear at the top of the Player screen). To play a particular track, doubleclick that description in the list. To shuffle the order in which the tracks are played, click the Turn Shuffle On button at the top of Windows Media Player (the first of the three buttons at the top of the screen, immediately left of the drop-down list box that shows the name of the album playing). Windows Media Player then plays the album tracks in a random order. To return to the album s original order again, click the Shuffle button a second time. Radio stations If you have a connection to the Internet, you can use the radio tuner in Windows Media Player to play your favorite Internet radio stations. To play an Internet radio station, open Windows Media

59 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 59 Playing Music, Video, and Movies 59 Player by clicking the Start button and then clicking Windows Media Player on the left side of the Start menu. In the Media Player, click the Radio Tuner button in the panel on the left. When you click the Radio Tuner button, Windows Media Player then divides the screen into two panes: The Presets pane on the left, where you can select a favorite station to play. Click the name of the station in the preset list to select it and then click the Play button (the one with the rightpointing triangle that appears immediately in front of the station name) to connect to the station and start playing it. The Station Finder pane on the right side, where you can find stations to play or to add to the Presets pane. To find a station in the list, in the first drop-down list box on the left under Station Finder, select the way you want the station information to be listed (Format, Band, Language, Location, and so on). Then, in the second list box on the right under STATION FINDER, select the criteria by which you want the list restricted (for example, if you use Format in the first drop-down list, you select the type of format such as 60s, 70s, 80s, Big Band, Talk Radio, Soft Rock, Soundtracks, and the like, in the second). To play a station in the Station Finder list, click the name to select it and then click the Play button (the one with the right-pointing triangle that appears immediately in front of the station name).

60 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff To search the list for a particular radio station, click the Search button on the right side of the Station Finder pane, select your search criteria in Advanced Station Search dialog box, and then click Find. You can customize the radio station presets on the My Presets list by adding presets that you locate in the Station Finders pane. To select the My Presets list, choose My Presets in the drop-down list box under PRESETS in the left pane. To add radio stations that you ve located in the Station Finders pane to this list, click the station name in the Station Finder list to select it and then click the <<< button to copy it to My Presets. In addition to adding stations to the My Presets list, you can create preset lists of your own and add radio station presets to them. To create your own Preset list, follow these steps: 1. Click the Edit button to the immediate right of the PRESETS drop-down list to open the Edit Preset Lists dialog box. 2. Type the name for the new preset list (such as Greg s Presets) in the Add New List text box (which is automatically selected); then click the Add button that appears to the right. 3. Click the OK button at the bottom of the Edit Preset Lists dialog box to close it and return to Windows Media Player. 4. To add new stations to your new custom preset, select that name in the drop-down list box under PRESETS and then locate and add the radio stations you want to appear on this list as I describe in the second bullet point on the Station Finder pane in the previous list. Copying audio files and making CDs If your hard drive has sufficient room, you can copy music that you play either with the CD Player or the Radio Tuner. When you copy tracks from an audio CD, Windows automatically compresses them (otherwise, you d end up sacrificing hundreds of megabytes of storage space to the likes of Britney Spears). After copying tracks from an audio CD or the radio turner, you can then add those songs to your own playlists and, if your computer has a CDR drive (a CD-ROM that is capable of not only playing but also recording CDs), you can then burn your own audio CDs. Copying music to your hard drive To copy tracks from an Audio CD, click the CD Audio button in the Windows Media Player. The Player automatically marks all tracks for copying by putting check marks in each of the check boxes

61 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 61 preceding the number and title of the CD tracks. To copy the entire CD-ROM, go ahead and click the Copy Music button at the top of the Windows Media Player window. To skip some of the tracks, click the check boxes of the tracks you don t want copied to remove those check marks before you click the Copy from CD button. The Copy Status column in the Windows Media Player keeps you informed of the progress in copying each of the marked tracks. To stop the copying of a track, click the Stop Copy button (which replaces the Copy Music button). To listen to the CD as the tracks are copied onto your hard drive, click the Play button after you click the Copy Music button. To copy music from an Internet radio station, you select File Add to Media Library Add Currently Playing Track on the Windows Media Player menu bar. To change the compression level that Windows Media Player uses when recording audio files on your hard drive, click Tools Options and then click the Devices tab. This tab lists all of the devices, such as CD drives, and portable devices, such as handheld computers, that you ve connected to your system. Double-click the name of the device for which you want to change the compression, and then click the Select Quality Level radio button and drag the slider beneath it to the left (to decrease the quality by increasing the compression) or right (to increase the quality and decrease the amount of compression). Click OK twice to close the Properties dialog box and the Options dialog box. Creating playlists Playing Music, Video, and Movies 61 After copying audio CD tracks or songs downloaded from the Internet, you can organize your tracks and audio clips into playlists that determine the group the songs are in and control the order in which they re played. To create a new playlist for your songs, follow these steps: 1. Click the Media Library button in the Windows Media Player. 2. Click the New Playlist button at the top of the Media Player window. 3. Enter a name for the playlist in the text box provided by the New Playlist dialog box and click OK. 4. Click the appropriate icon the Audio section of the outline of the media files in your Media library in the pane on the left. Select Album to add tracks saved under a particular album name. Select Artist if the songs are saved under the artist s name. Select All Audio if you want to be able to select songs from all the audio files you ve saved in the Media library.

62 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff 5. Select the songs you want to add to the new playlist by clicking them: to select a continuous list of songs, click the first one and then hold down Shift as you click the last one. To select individual songs that aren t next to one another, hold down Ctrl as you click each one. 6. Click the Add to Playlist button at the top of the Media Player window and then click the name of the new playlist you just added in the pop-up menu. 7. To verify that your playlist contains all the tracks you intended to add, scroll down the media file outline in the left pane of the Windows Media Player until you see the name of your playlist under the heading My Playlists and then click that icon to display the contents in the pane on the right. To play a song in a playlist, select that playlist in the My Playlists section of the media files outline in the left pane of the Windows Media Player and then double-click the song title in the pane on the right. Recording audio CDs If your computer is equipped with a CD-R or CD-RW drive, you can make your own audio CDs. A CD-R drive is a CD recordable drive that is capable of making only one copy to a blank CD. A CD-RW drive or a CD rewritable drive is capable of copying tracks on the same CD multiple times. CDs recorded with a CD-R drive can be played on any CD player (including portable CD players, such as the Sony Discman). CDs recorded with a CD-RW drive, however, can only be played on CD-ROM drives like the one connected to your computer. Before you can record audio files to a blank CD, you must organize the tracks into a playlist (see the previous section Creating playlists for details). The Adaptec CD Recording plug-in that does the recording in the Windows Media Player can record audio files saved in any of the following audio formats: MP3 audio files (which use the.mp3 file extension) Windows audio files (which use the.wav file extension) Windows Media Audio files (which use the.wma file extension and are the type of files that the Windows Media Player uses when you copy music from your CDs or the Internet radio) If you re copying a CD with a CD-R drive, be sure that the songs in your playlist use most of the space on the new CD as you won t have a second chance to burn the CD. Also, check to make sure

63 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 63 Playing Music, Video, and Movies 63 that songs in your playlist run no longer than 74 minutes total (or 650 MB) because this is the longest amount of music that you can record on a blank CD with a CD-R. To record the tracks in your playlists on a blank CD, put a new recordable CD in the computer CD-R or CD-RW drive and then follow these steps: 1. Open the Windows Media Player by clicking the Start button and then clicking Windows Media Player on the left side of the Start menu. 2. Select File Copy Copy to CD on the Windows Media Player menu to open the Playlists dialog box. 3. Click the name of the playlist you want to add to the CD and then click the OK button. 4. After the Adaptec CD Recording plug-in program finishes scanning and preparing the data for recording, click the Record button. During the copying process, the Adaptec CD Recording plug-in transcodes each file by converting and compressing the file in a temporary location on your computer. After the files are transcoded, the copying process begins. Note that the CD isn t finished until Complete appears for each track in the list shown in the Adaptec CD Recording Plug-in dialog box. When the recording of the last track is complete, you will briefly see a Closing Disc message before the dialog box closes. The compression quality that you use to copy tracks from an audio CD to the Media Library on your computer determines the sound quality of the tracks but not the length. When you copy tracks from a playlist in your Media Library to a blank CD, the tracks of the new CD reflect the sound quality used. Provided you have sufficient space on your hard drive, you should use the highest possible sound quality when recording tracks from a CD onto your hard drive that you intend later to copy to CDs made with your computer CD-R or CD-RW drive. To increase the sound quality before recording tracks on your hard drive, click Tools Options on the Windows Media Player menu and then click the Copy Music tab in the Options dialog box. Drag the Copy Music as This Quality slider to the right until you reach the quality that you have hard drive space for (the message beneath the slider keeps you informed of how many megabytes are required to burn an entire CD at each quality setting you select). Also, be sure that the Digital Copying and Use Error Correction check boxes are both selected before you close the Options dialog box.

64 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Video files Most of the time, Windows Media Player automatically opens in Now Playing mode whenever you open a video file that requires it to play. However, you can start the Windows Media Player yourself and then browse to and open the video file you want to play. To open the Windows Media Player, you click the Start button on the Windows taskbar and then click Windows Media Player on the left side of the Start menu. To play a local video file (that is, one that s been saved on your hard drive or a CD-ROM), choose the File Open command (Ctrl+O) and then enter the pathname of the file in the Open text box or use the Browse button to locate it in a standard Open dialog box. If you keep your video clips and movies in the My Videos folder, you can open this folder by clicking the My Documents button on the left side of the Open dialog box and then double-clicking My Videos in the main list box. After the video starts playing, you can pause it by clicking the Pause button (the one with two vertical bars). To restart the video, click the Play button (the one with the triangle pointing to the right that replaces the Pause button). If you want to stop the video, click the Stop button (the one with the square). You can control the video volume by dragging the vertical volume control (appearing in the triangle that looks like a ramp to the right of the Stop button). Drag this control to the right (to increase the volume) or to the left (to decrease the volume). To temporarily mute the player, click the mute button (the tiny button with the picture of the speaker to the immediate left of the volume control). To turn off the mute, just click the mute button a second time. When viewing a video in Now Playing mode, you can control the following settings: To display the video playlist (if it has one) in a pane on the right side of the Windows Media Player screen, click the Show Playlist in Now Playing button (the second button of the three small buttons that appear at the top of the Player screen). To play a particular track in the video, double-click the description in the list. To modify the color settings, adjust the brightness and contrast, or change the size, choose View Now Playing Tools Video Settings on the Media Player pull-down menus. To change the color settings or adjust the brightness or contrast, drag the appropriately marked slider. To reset the video to the original settings, click the button marked Reset. To change the size of the video in the Windows Media Player, click the Select Zoom Level button (the one that now reads 100%) and select the

65 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 65 appropriate size from the pop-up menu (50%, 200%, or Fit to Window). To display captions for the video (if these have been added), at the bottom of the Windows Media Player, choose View Now Playing Tools Captions on the Media Player menu. DVDs Playing Music, Video, and Movies 65 Windows Media Player can now play movies and other video content that s been recorded on DVDs (alternatively known as Digital Versatile Discs or Digital Video Discs). Like conventional DVD players, the Windows Media Player can skip to specific chapters, play sequences in slow motion, and switch the audio and caption languages. You can also use your connection to the Internet to download extra information about the title you re playing. In order to use the Windows Media Player to play DVD-based movies and other video, you must have a special DVD drive (your regular CD-ROM drive isn t going to do it) and a DVD decoder installed on your computer. Note, however, that DVD drives can read both audio CD-ROMs and DVD disks. To play a DVD with the Windows Media Player, you simply pop the disk into your drive and wait for the Media Player window to open. If the Windows Media Player window doesn t open automatically, you can open it manually: Click the Start button and then click Windows Media Player on the left side of the Start menu. After the Windows Media Player window opens, click the Media Library button and then select the DVD to play by clicking the My Playlist button in the media list in the left pane followed by the name of the DVD in the pane on the right. After selecting the DVD, you can play, pause, stop, and eject the disc by using the same buttons you use when using the CD Player: To start playing the DVD disc, click the Play button (the one with the triangle pointing to the right) or select Play Play/Pause on the menu bar (Ctrl+P). To pause the DVD disc, click the Pause button (the one with two vertical bars) or select Play Play/Pause on the menu bar (Ctrl+P). To stop playing the DVD disc, click the Stop button (the one with the square) or select Play Stop (Ctrl+S). To eject the DVD disc, click the Eject button (the one with the triangle pointing up over a single horizontal bar) or select Play Eject on the menu bar or click (Ctrl+E) on the Media Player menu bar.

66 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Note that when playing a DVD with Windows Media Player, you get the best results if you turn off any screen savers and make sure that the system hibernation setting is turned off. See Appearance and Themes in Part IV for information on turning off your screen saver and Shutting Down Windows later in this part for details on the hibernation setting. Many DVD discs offer special features, such as trailers and interviews with the stars. To access these special features in Windows Media Player, select the View DVD Features Top Menu to display the disc main menu. Click the link to the special feature that then appears in the main video area of the Windows Media Player to access that feature. To change the speed at which the DVD plays, select View Now Playing Tools DVD Controls to add a variable speed slider between the Pause and Play buttons in the Media Player. Drag the slider to the right to speed up the playback and to the left to slow it down. To play the video backwards in slow motion, drag the slider to left of the hash mark below the Pause button. You can even save still images from the DVD movie or other video that you re watching. To save a still image from a video as a bitmap graphics file (which uses the BMP file extension), pause the DVD by clicking the Pause button or selecting Play Play/Pause (Ctrl+P) and then selecting View DVD Features Capture Image on the menu bar. Windows then copies the still image to the Windows Clipboard. To then save the image, open a program (such as Paint), paste the image into the program with Edit Paste, and then save the file with the File Save command. See Paint in Part III for details on saving graphics with the Paint program. Portable device You can use the Copy to CD or Device button in Windows Media Player to copy music to handheld devices, which include pocket PCs (such as the Compaq ipaq and the HP Jornada), PDAs Personal Digital Assistants (such as the Palm PalmPilot III and Casio Cassiopeia), and even some types of portable MP3 players. Before you can use Windows Media Player to copy music files, you must establish a connection between the desktop computer running Windows XP and your handheld device. This connection is most often made via a cable or, in some cases, a cradle that connects the two devices with a USB or serial cable. After you ve connected a handheld device to the desktop computer running Windows XP, open Windows Media Player on the desktop computer by clicking the Start button on the taskbar and then clicking the Copy to CD or Device button on the left side.

67 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 67 Printing Printing 67 When you click this button, Windows divides the Windows Media Player window into a left pane called Music to Copy and a right pane called Music on Device. You then follow these steps to copy music files from the Media Library to your handheld device: 1. Click the Media Library button on the left side of Windows Media Player and select the tracks you want to copy; see Creating playlists earlier in this part for details on selecting tunes. 2. Click the Copy to CD or Device button on the left side of Windows Media Player. The tracks that you selected in the Media Library are now displayed in the Music to Copy pane. 3. Select the folder on the portable device into which you want to copy the selected tracks. If your portable device has a separate storage card that acts like a second hard drive and you want to copy the music onto this card, select it by clicking the drop-down button to the right of the name of the device and select the card on the pop-up menu. If Windows Media Player is having trouble finding the portable device and listing the folders, press F5 or, if you connect through a cradle, remove then reseat the device in the cradle. 4. Each of the tracks you selected for copying in the Media library has a check mark in the check box that precedes the name and description. If you decide that you don t want to copy some of the tracks or don t have room to copy them, click the check boxes to remove the check marks. 5. Click the Copy Music button in the top right of Windows Media Player to copy all of the marked tracks in the Music to Copy pane to the folder or card selected in the Music on Device pane. When Windows Media Player finishes copying the marked tracks, they appear in the list shown in the Music on Device pane. You can then disconnect the handheld device, put on your headphones, and listen to your tunes. Although printing is usually performed with a program, such as a word processor or a graphics program, you can print documents directly from the Windows XP desktop. You simply drag the icon for the file you want to print to the shortcut icon for the printer. To create a shortcut to your printer on the desktop, follow these steps: 1. Click the Start button on the Windows taskbar and then click Control Panel in the right-hand column on the Start menu.

68 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff 2. Click the Printers and Other Hardware hyperlink if the Control Panel window is in Category View. Otherwise, double-click the Printers and Faxes icon if the Control Panel window is in Classic View. 3. If you started the Control Panel in Category View, click the Printers and Faxes hyperlink in the Printers and Other Hardware window. If you started the Control Panel in Classic View, skip this step. 4. Right-click the icon of the printer for which you want to create a shortcut and then click Create Shortcut on the pop-up menu. 5. Click the Yes button in the alert dialog box informing you that Windows can t create a shortcut here and asking you if you want the shortcut created on the desktop instead. After creating a printer shortcut on the desktop, you can print files stored in folders on your computer by dragging the file icons and then dropping them on top of the printer shortcut. If the file was created by an application such as Word 2002 or Notepad, Windows opens this file in the program and then immediately sends it to the printer. In the case of a graphic file or other type of file not associated with a particular program, Windows just sends the file directly to the printer. Note that Windows XP lets you know when a document has been successfully sent to the printer by beeping and displaying a message balloon from the printer icon in the Notification area on the Windows taskbar. If this message doesn t automatically disappear from the taskbar, click the balloon to make it go away. Managing the print queue Sometimes after sending a bunch of files to a printer, you find that nothing s getting printed and you need to check out the printer queue to find out what is or is not going on. Because Windows XP supports background printing, a printer queue can get pretty stacked up with print jobs even when everything is proceeding normally. To check out the print jobs in your printer queue, you need to follow these steps: 1. Open the Printer window with the printer queue by doubleclicking the printer shortcut on the Windows desktop. If you haven t made such a shortcut, right-click the printer icon in the Notification area (also known as the system tray) on the far right side of the Windows taskbar and then select Open All Active Printers and Faxes on the pop-up menu that appears.

69 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page After the window with the print jobs queued up for your printer opens, you can do any of the following things to the contents: To temporarily pause the printing of the documents in the print queue, choose Printer Pause Printing. To remove a particular file from the print queue, select it in the list and then click Document Cancel. To cancel the printing of all the documents, click Printer Cancel All Documents instead. To change the position of a document in the print queue, drag the print queue description to a new position in the list (you can tell where the print job will appear by the appearance of the dark I-beam at the mouse pointer). Note that you can t move a print job to a new position in the queue if the document status shows that the job is currently being printed. 3. After you finish reviewing and changing the settings for the jobs in the print queue, click the Close box on the printer window. Installing a new printer Printing 69 The day may come when you finally get the boss to spring for that new color laser printer. Before you can use that beauty, however, you have to install it by adding the new printer to your Printers folder by using the Add Printer Wizard. When installing a new printer with the Add Printer Wizard, you can choose between adding a local printer (that is, one that s directly cabled to your computer through one of the ports) or a network printer (that is, a printer that s connected to your network with an Ethernet connection, just as your computer is connected to the LAN). To install a new local printer with the Add Printer Wizard, follow these steps: 1. Click the Start button on the Windows taskbar and then click Control Panel on the right side of the Start menu. 2. Click the Printers and Other Hardware hyperlink if the Control Panel window is in Category View. Otherwise, double-click the Printers and Faxes icon if the Control Panel window is in Classic View. 3. Click the Add a Printer hyperlink in the Printers and Other Hardware window to start the Add Printer Wizard and then click the Next button or press Enter to advance to the Local Printer or Printer Connection dialog box.

70 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff 4. Make sure that the Add Printer Wizard selects the Local Printer radio button, and the Automatically Detect and Install my Plug and Play Printer check box beneath this radio button before you click the Next button. 5. If the wizard is unable to detect your printer in the New Printer Detection dialog box, click Next to install the printer manually. 6. Select the port for the printer to use in the Use the Following Port drop-down list box in the Select a Printer Port dialog box and then click the Next button. 7. Click the manufacturer and the model of the printer in the Manufacturers and Printers list boxes, respectively, of the Install Printer Software dialog box. If you have a disk with the software for the printer, put it into your floppy or CD-ROM drive and then click the Have Disk button: Select the drive that contains this disk in the Copy Manufacturer s Files drop-down list box and then click OK. 8. Click the Next button to advance to the Name Your Printer dialog box. If you want, edit the name for the printer in the Printer Name text box. If you want to make the printer that you re installing the default printer that is automatically used whenever you print from Windows or from within a Windows program, leave the Yes radio button selected beneath the heading, Do you want your Windows-based programs to use this printer as the default printer? 9. Click the Next button to advance to the Printer Sharing dialog box. If you want to share this printer with other users on the network, click the Share Name radio button and then, if you want, edit the share name (this is the name that the other users on the network see when they go to select this printer for printing their documents) that the wizard gives the printer in the Share Name text box. 10. To print a test page from your newly installed printer, click the Yes radio button selected beneath the heading, Would you like to print a test page? in the Print Test Page dialog box. 11. Click the Next button to advance to the Completing the Add Printer Wizard dialog box, where you can review the settings for your new printer before you click the Finish button or press Enter to finish installing the new printer. To use the Add Printer Wizard to install a printer that s available through your Local Area Network, you follow just slightly different steps: 1. Click the Start button on the Windows taskbar and then click Control Panel on the right side of the Start menu.

71 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 71 Printing Click the Printers and Other Hardware hyperlink if the Control Panel window is in Category View. Otherwise, double-click the Printers and Faxes icon if the Control Panel window is in Classic View. 3. Click the Add a Printer hyperlink in the Printers and Other Hardware window to start the Add Printer Wizard and then click the Next button or press Enter to advance to the Local or Network Printer dialog box. 4. Click the A Network Printer or a Printer Attached to Another Computer radio button in the Local or Network Printer dialog box and then click the Next button or press Enter to the Specify a Printer dialog box. 5. If you know the name of the network printer, click the Connect to This Printer (or to Browse for a Printer, Select this Option and click Next) radio button and then enter the network path in the Name text box. If your network printer is on a network that uses an Internet address and you know this URL address, click the Connect to a Printer on the Internet or on a Home or Office Network radio button and then enter the address in the URL text box. If you know neither of these pieces of information, leave the Browse for a Printer radio button selected and then click Next to advance to the Browse for Printer dialog box. 6. In the Browse for Printer dialog box, locate the printer in the Shared Printers list box by clicking the network icons until you expand the outline sufficiently to display the printer icon. When you click the printer icon in this outline, the wizard adds the path to the Printer text box above. 7. Click the Next button to advance the Default Printer dialog box. If you want to make the printer that you re installing the default printer that is automatically used whenever you print from Windows or from within a Windows program, leave the Yes radio button selected beneath the heading, Do you want your Windows-based programs to use this printer as the default printer? 8. Click the Next button to advance to the Completing the Add Printer Wizard dialog box, where you can review the settings for your new printer before you click the Finish button or press Enter to finish installing the new printer. After you add a printer to your computer, you can start using it when printing with programs such as Word 2002 and Excel 2002, or when printing from Windows itself. To switch to a new printer that you haven t designated as the default printer in programs such as Word and Excel, you need to open the Print dialog box (choose File Print) and then select the printer name in the Name drop-down list box.

72 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Running Programs in Compatibility Mode Some programs designed for earlier versions of Windows won t run under Windows XP. Until you can get your hands on a program upgrade for Windows XP, you can try running the program in one of Windows XP Compatibility Modes by following these steps: 1. Double-click the desktop shortcut called Run in Compatibility Mode that s automatically installed there when you install Windows XP to open a full-size Help and Support window with instructions and controls for starting an application in Compatibility Mode. You can also open this window by clicking Start on the Windows taskbar and then clicking Help and Support on the Start menu. Next, click the Find Compatible Hardware and Software for Windows XP link and then click the Program Compatibility Wizard link at the bottom of the window navigation pane. 2. Read the instructions on the Welcome to Programs Compatibility Wizard screen, paying particular attention to the warning about not using Compatibility Mode on programs, such as anti-virus software and backup tools, that specifically prohibit their use on future editions of the operating system before you click the Next button. 3. In the next screen, click the radio button indicating how you want to locate the program you want to run: I Want to Choose from a List of Programs, I Want to Use the Program in the CD-ROM Drive, or I Want to Locate the Program Manually. 4. If you selected the I Want to Choose from a List of Programs radio button, click the name of the program you want to run in the list that appears before you click Next. If you selected the I Want to Locate the Program Manually radio button, type the path to the program in the text box that appears or click the Browse button and locate it in the Please Select Application dialog box and select the Open button before you click Next. 5. In the next screen, called Select a Compatibility Mode for the Program, click the radio button for the version of Windows under which your program used to run or was designed to run: Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 5), Microsoft Windows 98/Windows Me, or Microsoft Windows In the next screen called Select Display Settings for the Program, click the check box or boxes for the display settings that are recommended for running the program. These check box options include: 256 Colors, 640 x 480 Screen Resolution, and Disable Visual Themes.

73 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 73 Running Programs in Compatibility Mode Searching for Files and Folders Click the Next button to advance to the Test Your Compatibility Settings screen where you can verify your selections for the program. 8. If your settings are correct, click the Next button to run the program in compatibility mode. If Windows XP can run the program in the selected Compatibility Mode, the program then launches in a separate window. If Windows can t run the application, you receive an alert box indicating that there s a problem. In such a case, you have to contact the software manufacturer and get an upgrade for the application that s specifically designed for the Windows XP operating system. Note that when you exit the program that you re running in compatibility mode, Windows automatically returns you to the Program Compatibility Wizard in the Help and Support window. Searching for Files and Folders The Search feature enables you to quickly locate all those misplaced files that you re just sure are hiding somewhere on your hard drive. To open the Search Results window to search for a file, follow these steps: 1. Click the Start button on the taskbar and then click Search on the right side of the Start menu. This action opens the Search Results window. 2. Click the All Files and Folders hyperlink in the Search Companion Explorer bar on the left side of the Search Results window. 3. Enter the name of the file or folder in the Part or All of the File Name text box in the Search Companion Explorer bar. If you re not entirely sure of the file or folder name, enter the characters you re sure of followed by the * wildcard character. Windows will then search for all files that begin with the characters you entered regardless of what letters or characters follow. 4. (Optional) If you remember a key word or phrase that might help in locating the file or folder, click the A Word or Phrase in the File text box and enter the text there. 5. By default, Windows searches the main hard drive of your computer for the file. To have Windows search a different drive on your system, click the Look In drop-down button and click the name of the drive in the pop-up menu.

74 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff 6. (Optional) You can narrow the search by indicating the approximate date when the file or folder was created. To do this, click the When Was It Modified hyperlink continuation button (two greater than signs pointing down) and then click the appropriate radio button: Within the Last Week, Past Month, Within the Past Year, or Specify Dates. When you click the Specify Dates radio button, the From and To text boxes become active so that you can enter the starting and ending date for the time period. 7. (Optional) You can narrow the search by indicating the approximate size of the file or folder. To do this, click the What Size Is It continuation button (two greater than signs pointing down) and then click the appropriate radio button: Small (Less than 100 KB), Medium (Less than 1 MB), Large (More than 1 MB), or Specify Size. When you click the Specify Size radio button, you can specify the minimum or maximum size in kilobytes by entering the lowest or highest number of KB in the Specify Size text box. By default, Windows uses the value you enter as the minimum size (indicated by the appearance of At Least in the associated drop-down list box). To designate the value as the maximum size, click the drop-down button to the right of At Least and click At Most in the pop-up menu. 8. (Optional) By default, Windows searches the system folders and all subfolders within the designated drive. To prevent Windows from searching these places or to have Windows search hidden files and folders, specify a case-sensitive search, or search a tape backup drive connected to your system, click the More Advanced Options continuation button (two greater than signs pointing down) and then click the check box for the search options you don t want used (Search System Folders, and Search Subfolders). To have Windows search for hidden files and folders, click the Search Hidden Files and Folders check box. To have Windows conduct a case-sensitive search for the filename, click the Case Sensitive check box to put a check mark in it. To have Windows search a tape backup drive, click the Search Tape Backup check box to give it a check mark. 9. (Optional) To narrow the search to only files of a particular type on the designated drive, click the Type of File drop-down button in the More Advanced Options section and then click the type of file to search for in the drop-down list. 10. Click the Search button at the bottom of the Search Companion Explorer bar to start the search. If the file or folder you re searching for appears in the right pane of the Search Results window before the search is completed, or you see that you re getting the completely wrong results, click the Stop button.

75 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 75 Searching for Files and Folders 75 When Windows XP completes a search, it displays a list of all the files and folders that meet your search conditions in the right pane of the Search Results window (as shown in the preceding figure). This list includes the file or folder name, location, size, type, and the date the file or folder was last modified. If the list contains the file you wanted, you can open a window on the folder that contains the file by right-clicking that icon and then clicking Open on the shortcut menu. If you didn t find the file or folder you were looking for and you want to continue your search, you can click the Change File Name or Keywords hyperlink in the Search Companion Explorer bar or the Look in More Locations hyperlink and refine these search criteria. To start a new search, click the Start a New Search button instead. Searching for computers, people, and Web sites Files aren t the only things that you can search for with the Search command. In addition, you click the Computers or People hyperlink in the Search Companion Explorer bar of the Search Results window to search for computers on your network or people in your address book. To find a computer on your Local Area Network, click the A Computer on the Network hyperlink under the heading What are you Looking For. Enter the name of the computer in the Computer Name text box that then appears before you click the Search button. When you search for people, Windows normally searches in your address book (see Adding Contacts in Part II for details).

76 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff You can also search online directories, such as the Bigfoot Internet Directory Service or the VeraSign Internet Directory Service. To do an online search using one of these directories, click the dropdown button attached to the Look In drop-down list box (which currently reads Address Book) and select the directory to search in the pop-up menu. Enter the name of the person you re trying to locate along with his or her address in the appropriate text boxes and then click the Find Now button to begin the search. Note that when you search one of the online directories, such as Bigfoot, Windows connects you to that directory on the Internet before beginning the search. After Windows finishes searching the Address Book or online directory, the results of the search appear at the bottom of an expanded Find People dialog box. To search for someone listed in your address book, follow these steps: 1. Click the People in Your Address Book hyperlink in the Search Companion Explorer bar to open the Find People dialog box. 2. Enter either the name or the address of the person you want to find in the appropriate text box. Note that when you search the address book, you can also search for the person by his or her mailing address, telephone number, or some comment that you ve entered about the person. 3. Click the Find Now button to begin searching your Address Book or the online directory you selected. 4. When you finish your people searching, click the Close button in the upper-right corner of the Find People dialog box. To search for Web sites on the Internet, you click the Search the Internet hyperlink in the Search Companion Explorer bar. Then type keywords or a phrase indicating the kind of sites you want to find in the What Are You Looking For text box (such as Caribbean vacations) and then click the Search button. Windows then connects you to the Internet and displays the search results on the MSN Web Search page (which appears within the Search Results window to the right of the Search Companion Explorer bar). To browse one of the links on this site, scroll to it and then click it with the mouse. For more information on searching the Internet, see Searching the Web in Part II.. Searching for pictures, music, or video The Windows XP search feature lets you restrict your file search to picture or photographic files, sound files, or video files. To search for files containing these kinds of media, you open the Search

77 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 77 Results window (by clicking Start and then clicking Search) and then click the Pictures, Music, or Video hyperlink at the top of the Search Companion Explorer bar on the left side of the window. Click the check box for the type of files (Pictures and Photos, Music and Sound, or Video) that you re looking for and then enter the complete or partial filename in the All or Part of the Filename text box below. Remember that you can use the wildcard characters? (for single missing characters) and * (for multiple missing characters) when entering the name of the file(s) to locate. After you finish selecting the type of files to locate and the name of the file(s) to locate, click the Search button. Windows then lists all the files of the specified type that match the specified filename on the right side of the Search Results window. Selecting Commands on Menus Selecting Commands on Menus 77 Menus provide the means for Windows to organize and display the command choices you have at any given time, as well as the means for you to indicate your particular command choice. Windows XP relies mainly on three types of command menus (each of which I describe more fully in the following sections): Pull-down menus that are attached to the menu bar that appears along the top of the window. Shortcut menus (sometimes known as context menus) that are attached to a particular object, such as the Windows desktop, the Windows taskbar, or the Recycle Bin icon. Control menus that are attached to the program or document icon that appears in the very upper-left corner of the program or application window. The following are a few general guidelines that apply when using these types of menus: If you see a right-facing black triangle to the right of an option on a menu, another menu containing more options appears when you highlight (or select) that option. If you see an ellipsis (...) at the end of an option in a menu, a dialog box appears when you select that option; see Dialog boxes later in this section. If you don t see any kind of symbol next to a menu option, the selected option is carried out immediately.

78 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Pull-down menus Pull-down menus are the primary means for making your wishes known in Windows XP. (Although most commands on pull-down menus live up to their name and appear below the menu, some (such as the Start menu) actually display their options above the menu name when you open them.) Within windows such as My Documents, My Computer, and Internet Explorer 6, the pull-down menus are located on the menu bars right below the title bar. Three methods used to open pull-down menus and select commands are: Using the mouse: Point to the pull-down menu (a shadowed button appears) and then click the menu name on the menu bar to open the menu. Move the mouse pointer through the menu to highlight the desired command and then click to select the menu command. Using the Alt key: Press the Alt key to display the command letter (also known as the hot key) in the menu or menu item name (the command letter is the one that s underlined in the name). Continue to hold down the Alt key as you type the command letter in the menu name to open the pull-down menu. Then, type the command letter of the menu item to select the command. Using the F10 function key: Press the F10 key to activate the menu bar (the File menu name becomes a raised button and the command letters are displayed in the menu names). Either type the command letter in the menu name or press the key to highlight the desired menu and use the key to open the menu. Press the appropriate arrow key to navigate until the desired menu item is highlighted and then press the Enter key to select it. Note that after a pull-down menu is open, you can use the or keys to select and open other pull-down menus on the menu bar. To open the Start menu on the Windows taskbar with the keyboard, press Ctrl+Esc. If you want to see the underlined command letters for navigating Windows menus and dialog boxes at all times, follow these steps: 1. Right-click the Windows desktop and then click Properties on the shortcut menu. 2. Click the Appearance tab in the Display Properties dialog box.

79 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Click the Effects button in the Display Properties dialog box to open the Effects dialog box. 4. Click the Hide Underlined Letters for Keyboard Navigation Until I Press the Alt Key check box to remove that check mark and then click the OK button. Shortcut menus Shortcut (also known as context) menus are pop-up menus that are attached to particular objects in Windows, such as the desktop icons or even the desktop itself. These menus contain commands directly related to the object to which they re attached. To open a shortcut menu, right-click the object with the mouse. After you open a shortcut menu, you click the menu item to select it. Shortcut menus attached to program, folder, and file icons on the desktop or in a window usually contain varying assortments of the following commands: Open: Opens the file or folder. Send To: Sends a copy of the file or folder to a floppy disk, Compressed Folder (see Compressing files and folders earlier in this part), Infrared Recipient (that is, another computer or printer that s connected by an infrared port), Mail Recipient, Desktop (create shortcut), My Documents folder, or Web Publishing Wizard (to put on your Web site). Cut or Copy: Cuts or copies the file or folder to the Clipboard so that it can be moved or copied to another place on your system or network. See Copying (and Moving) Files and Folders earlier in this part for more on this topic. Create Shortcut: Creates a shortcut to the selected file or folder. See Creating Shortcuts earlier in this part for details. Delete: Deletes the file or folder by putting it into the Recycle Bin. See Deleting Junk earlier in this part for details. Rename: Changes the name of the selected object. See Renaming files and folders earlier in this part for details. Properties: Gives the lowdown on the selected file or folder. For details, see Getting Info on a Disk, Folder, or File earlier in this part. Dialog boxes Selecting Commands on Menus 79 Most dialog boxes appear as a result of selecting a menu command from either a pull-down menu or a shortcut menu. You can always

80 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff tell when choosing a command will open a dialog box because the command name is followed by an ellipsis (that s Greek for three dots in a row). For example, you know that choosing the Options... command on the Tools pull-down menu in a Windows XP window opens an Options dialog box because the command appears as Options... (with the ellipsis) rather than as Options (no ellipsis). At the top of each dialog box, you find a title bar that contains the name of the dialog box. You can reposition the dialog box on the screen by dragging it by the title bar (and nowhere else). You can t, however, resize a dialog box, which is the major difference between a dialog box and a window. Dialog boxes also contain any number of buttons and boxes that you use to make your selections known to Windows XP or to the particular Windows program you have open. The following figures point out the various boxes and buttons you encounter in dialog boxes. The following table tells you how to use the boxes and buttons. Tabs Radio buttons List box Text box Spinner buttons Dimmed button Command button

81 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 81 Selecting Commands on Menus 81 Radio buttons Check boxes List box Parts of a Dialog Box Check box Command button Dimmed button Drop-down list box List box Radio button What You Do with Them Used with items that enable you to choose more than one option. Selected options appear with a check mark inside the box, whereas the current check box option appears with a faint, dotted line around the option name. Used to initiate an action, such as putting the options you ve selected into effect by clicking the OK button. If the command name is dimmed, the button is temporarily out of commission until you select another prerequisite option. Looks like a text box with a down-arrow button right next door. Click the drop-down button to open a list box of possible choices. If more choices than will fit in the box are available, use the scroll bar on the right to display more choices. Displays an alphabetical list of all choices for an item. Use the scroll bar on the right to display new choices. The current choice is highlighted in the list. Used with items when you can choose only one of several options. The selected option appears with a dot in the middle of the radio button and a faint, dotted line around the option name. cont.

82 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Parts of a Dialog Box Slider Spinner button Tab Text box What You Do with Them Enables you to change a value (such as the sound playback volume or mouse speed) by dragging the slider back and forth (usually between Low and High, marked at each end). Enables you to select a new number in an accompanying edit box without having to actually type in that box. Clicking the up-arrow spinner button increases the value by one, and clicking the down-arrow spinner button decreases it by one. Lets you select a new page of options in the same dialog box, complete with their own buttons and boxes. Shows you the current setting and enables you to edit it or type in a whole new setting. If the text inside the box is selected, anything you type replaces the highlighted text. You can also delete text by pressing the Delete or Backspace key. Note that if the name on a command button is followed by an ellipsis (... ), clicking the button displays another dialog box. However, if the name of a command button is followed by two greater-than symbols (>>), choosing the button expands the current dialog box to display more choices. After you use these various buttons and boxes to make changes to the current settings controlled by the dialog box, you can close the dialog box and put the new settings into effect by choosing the OK button. If you want to close the dialog box without making any changes to the current settings, press the Esc key or click the Close button of the dialog box (the button with the X in it, located in the very upper-right corner of the dialog box). Alert dialog boxes An alert dialog box is a special type of dialog box that appears whenever Windows XP can t perform a prescribed task or when you re in a program and about to engage in an activity with possibly dire consequences. All alert dialog boxes basically say, You can t get there from here. Click the OK button to clear the dialog box and then start whatever process didn t work all over again (after taking care of the problem that Windows was complaining about). Click the Yes button (if the dialog box has one) to agree with the suggestion or click the No button to leave things as they are.

83 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 83 Wizards Wizards are a series of dialog boxes designed specifically to walk you through some sort of setup, such as installing a new printer or creating a new dial-up connection for getting online via your modem. Many times, you will know that you re dealing with a wizard because the title of the initial dialog box says something like Accessibility Settings Wizard or Add Printer Wizard. Other times, the title bar of the initial wizard dialog box doesn t use the term wizard at all. Even when the title bar doesn t give you any indication, you can still tell that you re dealing with a wizard because of the characteristic Back and Next buttons at the bottom of the dialog boxes. Also, you can tell when you ve reached the last wizard dialog box because this dialog box has a Finish button. As soon as you click this button, Windows closes the dialog box and puts your new settings into effect. Control menus Selecting Commands on Menus 83 The Control menu is a standard pull-down menu attached to all the windows that you ll ever open in Windows XP. To open the Control menu, click the little icon to the immediate left of the window name in the upper-left corner of the window title bar. If you double-click rather than single-click this icon, Windows closes the window and quits any application program that happens to be running in it. If you have an unsaved document open in the program whose window you just closed, Windows XP displays an alert dialog box that gives you a chance to save it before shutting down the shop. See Alert dialog boxes earlier in this section. Almost every Control menu you run into has these soon-tobecome-old-hat commands on it: Common Menu Commands Restore Move Size Minimize Maximize Close (Alt+F4) What They Do Restores a maximized or minimized window to an in-between size that you can easily change Moves the window to a new location on the desktop Enables you to resize the window by moving the left, right, top, or bottom side Shrinks the window all the way down to a button on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen Zooms the window to full size so that it fills up the entire screen Closes the window, thus automatically exiting the program running in it

84 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Selecting Commands on Explorer Bars Explorer bars are a special type of command bar that s featured prominently in windows such as the My Documents, My Computer, and the Internet Explorer 6 windows. When you open an Explorer bar in a window, the Explorer pane appears to the immediate left of the window, replacing the navigation pane, subdividing the window into two panes: Explorer on the far left, and the main part of the window on the right. Windows XP offers several different types of Explorer bars (many of which are Internet related). To display a particular Explorer bar, click View Explorer Bar on the window menu bar and then select one of the following commands from the submenu that appears: Search: (Ctrl+E) Opens or closes the Search Companion Explorer bar so that you can search for files, people, or for Web sites on the Internet; see Searching for Files and Folders, earlier in this part and Searching the Web in Part II for details. Favorites: (Ctrl+I) Opens or closes the Favorites Explorer bar, which contains a list of hyperlinks to your favorite Web sites, folders, and files. Use the hyperlinks on the Favorites Explorer bar to revisit one of the Web sites on the Internet or to open a favorite local folder or file; see Adding Web Favorites in Part II for details on adding stuff. History: (Ctrl+H) Opens or closes the History Explorer bar, which contains a chronological list of hyperlinks to Web sites that you ve recently visited and the folders and files that you ve recently opened. Use the hyperlinks on the History Explorer bar to revisit Web sites on the Internet or to reopen a local folder or file. Media: To display the Media with controls for playing, music, video, or multimedia files. The bottom of the Media pane contains controls (modeled after the ones on the remote of your VCR) for controlling the playback. You can use these controls to play your favorite Internet radio station (provided you have a connection to the Internet) or your favorite audio CDs while you work. Folders: Opens or closes the Folders pane in the window. When the Folders pane is open, you can open any of the objects that make up your computer system, such as the folders and files on particular disk drives in the pane on the right; see Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer earlier in this part for more information.

85 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 85 Selecting Commands on Explorer Bars Selecting Commands from Toolbars 85 Tip of the Day: Opens and closes a Did You Know pane at the bottom of the window where you can peruse a group of short how-to tips on better ways to perform common tasks in Windows XP. You can also open and close the Search and Folders Explorer bars by clicking the appropriate buttons (Search or Folders) on the Standard Buttons toolbar. Note also that you can close any Explorer bar by clicking the Close button (the one with the X). Selecting Commands from Toolbars Toolbars (often shortened to bars) contain the buttons and menus that you use to get things done. Different types of toolbars (each with its own group of buttons) appear within the various folder windows, such as My Documents and My Computer, the Web browsing window opened by Internet Explorer 6, as well as on the taskbar on the Windows XP desktop. When you first display toolbars in a window, they appear docked, one on top of the other, in neat little rows at the top of the window. When you first display toolbars on the taskbar, they appear one after the other on the taskbar, often scrunching up the buttons representing the various windows open on the desktop, and with spinner buttons for displaying new groups of buttons. To display a certain type of toolbar in one of the folder windows, such as My Documents or My Computer, click View Toolbars on the window menu bar and then select one of the following commands on the cascading menu that appears: Standard Buttons: Displays or hides the Standard Buttons toolbar. The particular buttons that appear on this toolbar depend on whether you re browsing local files and folders or Web pages on the Internet or the corporate intranet. Address Bar: Displays or hides the Address bar, which contains a text box in which you can enter the URL of the Web page you want to visit or the pathname of the folders you want to browse. Links: Displays or hides the Links bar, which contains buttons with links to your favorite Web pages. Lock the Toolbars: When this menu item is selected (indicated by a check mark in front of the name), you can t undock the toolbars that appear in the window (in other words, they re frozen in place). Customize: Displays the Customize Toolbar dialog box, where you can customize the current toolbar by adding, deleting, and/or rearranging the buttons.

86 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff To display a certain type of toolbar on the Windows XP taskbar, right-click the taskbar (making sure that you don t click the Start button or any of the other buttons that currently appear on the taskbar), select Toolbars on the shortcut menu, and choose one of the following commands on the cascading menu that appears: Address: Displays or hides the Address bar, which contains a text box in which you can enter the URL of the Web page you want to visit or the pathname of the folders you want to browse. Links: Displays or hides the Links bar, which contains buttons with links to favorite Web pages. Language Bar: Displays or Hides the Language bar icon in the Navigation area on the right side of the Windows taskbar when you use an Office XP program, such as Word 2002 or Excel To display the Language bar on-screen so that you can use the Dictation, Voice Command, or Handwriting features, click the Language bar icon on the taskbar and then click the Show Language Bar option on the pop-up menu. Desktop: Hides or displays the Desktop toolbar, which contains buttons for all the icons you have on your desktop. Quick Launch: Displays or hides the Quick Launch toolbar, which contains buttons for launching Internet Explorer 6, Outlook Express, along with a Show Desktop button for minimizing all open windows to show only the Windows XP desktop. New Toolbar: Opens the New Toolbar dialog box, where you can make the items in a particular folder into buttons on a new custom toolbar. If the taskbar is already full of buttons and you don t have much leeway for opening the taskbar shortcut menu with the Toolbars command, you can always right-click somewhere on the time in the Notification area of the taskbar (at the far right where the current time is displayed) to do so. Right-clicking the current time in the Notification area always brings up the shortcut menu for the taskbar, whereas right-clicking a button that appears on the taskbar or an icon in the status area opens a shortcut menu for just that button or icon. The Address bar You can use the Address bar to search or browse Web pages on the Internet or your corporate intranet, or to browse folders and files on local or networked disk drives. Just click the Address bar to insert the cursor into the text, type in the URL of the Web page or the pathname of the folder you want to browse, and then press the Enter key. If you add the Address bar to the Windows XP taskbar and then use it to browse a local drive or folder or Web page on the Internet, the

87 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 87 Selecting Commands from Toolbars 87 folders and files appear in a full-screen version of the My Computer window, and the Web pages appear in a full-screen version of Internet Explorer 6. If you use the Address bar in the My Computer or in the Internet Explorer 6 window (where the Address bar is automatically displayed) to browse local drives or folders or Internet Web pages, the folders, files, or Web pages appear in the particular window in whatever size it currently assumes. See also Browsing Drives, Folders, and Files on the Computer (in this part) and Browsing Web Pages and Searching the Web (both in Part II) for more information on using the Address bar. The Desktop toolbar The Desktop toolbar contains buttons for all the icons that appear on the Windows XP desktop. These buttons include a Desktop button for displaying the desktop, a My Documents button to display the My Documents window, a My Network Places button to display the My Network Places window, an Internet Explorer 6 button to launch the Internet Explorer, and a Recycle Bin button to open the Recycle Bin window. Along with these standard buttons, this toolbar contains buttons of all the desktop shortcuts you add for opening programs, folders, and files; see Creating Shortcuts earlier in this part for more information on shortcuts. By displaying the Desktop toolbar, you retain access to the desktop icons even when you remove their display from the desktop. Remember that you can hide and then redisplay the desktop icons by right-clicking the desktop and then clicking Arrange Icons By Show Desktop Icons on the shortcut menus. The Links toolbar The buttons on the Links toolbar (more often than not called simply the Links bar) are hyperlinks that open favorite Web pages. When you first start using Windows XP, the Links bar contains only buttons with links to Web pages on the Microsoft Web site. These buttons include the following: Customize Links opens a page with tips on how to add buttons to the Links bar. Free Hotmail opens the MSN Hotmail page where you can sign up for a free Hotmail address. Windows opens a page with the latest information about Windows XP. Windows Media opens the WindowsMedia.com page where you can listen to the latest music or download the latest N Sync or Britney Spears video.

88 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff You can, if you want, add to the Links toolbar custom buttons that open your favorite Web pages or preferred folders and files that reside on your desktop. To add a button with a link to a preferred Web page, folder, or file, you simply drag that icon to the place on the Links bar where you want it to appear (this icon appears on the Address bar in front of the Web page URL or folder or file pathname). You can tell where the new button will appear because a dark I-beam appears at the place where the button will be inserted when you release the mouse button. To delete a button that you no longer want on the Links bar, rightclick the button and then choose the Delete command on the button shortcut menu. The menu bar The menu bar in folder windows, such as My Documents, My Computer, and the Web browser window of Internet Explorer 6, all contain the pull-down menus that you use to perform all kinds of routine tasks. These windows contain the following menus: File: Does file-type stuff, such as renaming or deleting files and folders or creating shortcuts to them. Edit: Does editing-type stuff, such as cutting, copying, or pasting files or folders. View: Does show-and-tell stuff, such as displaying or hiding particular toolbars or parts of the window and changing the way file and folder icons appear in the windows. Favorites: Adds to, opens, or organizes the folders, files, Web pages, and Web channels that you bookmark or subscribe to. Tools: Changes various option settings for the window, such as Folder Options, that determine how you open files and folder icons, what file information is displayed, and which applications open what types of files. Help: Consults particular help topics that direct you in how to use Windows XP. See also Pull-down menus earlier in this part for details on using the pull-down menus that you find on the Windows menu bars. The Standard Buttons toolbar The Standard Buttons toolbar is the main toolbar that appears in folder windows, such as My Documents and My Computer, as well as in the Internet Explorer 6 window. The buttons on the Standard Buttons toolbar change depending upon whether you re browsing

89 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 89 Selecting Commands from Toolbars 89 local folders and files or Web pages on the Internet. When you open one of the folder windows to browse local folders and files, the Standard Buttons toolbar contains the following buttons: Back: Returns to the previously browsed folder or Web page. Forward: Returns to the folder or Web page that you browsed right before using the Back button to return to the current page. Up: Moves up one level in the directory structure. Search: Displays the Search Companion Explorer bar for searching for files, folders, people in your address book, and Web sites on the Internet. See Selecting Commands on Explorer Bars earlier in this part for details. Folders: Displays the Folders Explorer bar for locating files or folders on your computer. See Selecting Commands on Explorer Bars earlier in this part for details. View: Click repeatedly to change view options for the icons in the main display of the window. See Arranging and Sizing Icons in a Window earlier in this part for details on the various view options. When you browse a Web page, whether it s a local HTML document on your hard drive or one located on a Web server somewhere in cyberspace, the Back and Forward buttons that you see when browsing local folders and files are then joined by the following additional buttons: Stop: Immediately halts the downloading of a Web page that is just taking far too long to come in. Refresh: Refreshes the display of the current Web page (which sometimes helps when the contents of the page appear jumbled or incomplete). Home: Displays the Web page designated as the start page. This Web page appears each time you launch Internet Explorer 6 and connect to the Internet. Search: Displays the Search Companion Explorer bar, which you can use to search for Web sites on the Internet (see Searching the Web in Part II for details). Favorites: Displays the Favorites Explorer bar for opening files or folders or revisiting favorite Web pages that you ve bookmarked. Media Bar: Displays an Explorer bar which contains the controls for playing music and video along with links from WindowsMedia.com to featured music artists, movie previews, and online radio stations.

90 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff History: Displays the History Explorer bar for reopening recently accessed files or folders or revisiting Web pages that you ve visited within the last few days or weeks. Mail: Displays a pop-up menu of options, including Read Mail, New Message, Send a Link, Send Page, and Read News. Print: Sends the current Web page to your printer. Edit: Opens the current Web page editor (exposing the raw HTML tags); you can also select the program in which to open the HMTL page from the pop-up menu. The status bar The folder windows that you routinely use, such as My Documents, My Pictures, My Computer, and the like, don t normally display their status bars. To display the status bar for the particular window that you have open, you need to click View Status Bar on that window s menu bar. The status bar, when displayed, appears at the bottom of the window where it gives you statistics, such as the number of objects (that is drive, folder, and file icons) that the window contains, the size of the objects in kilobytes (KB), plus the name of the parent folder open in the window. When you select a file icon in the window, the status bar gives you specific information on the selected document, including the file type, the date and time it was last modified, and the size in kilobytes. When you click a folder, the status bar either gives you a rather nondescript, 1 objects selected, message, or it displays a general description of the folder. For example, when you click the My Music folder in the My Documents window, the status bar displays the message, Stores and manages music files. You can always get information about the folder or file you select in a window (whether or not the status bar is displayed) by clicking the Details button in the window navigation pane (the one with the two greater than signs pointing downward). Clicking this button expands the Details section of the navigation pane to give information on the selected folder or file, such as the size, the date and time last modified, and, in the case of files, the type and author. To shrink the Details section and hide this information in the navigation pane, click the Details button a second time (this time, the icon shows two arrows pointing upward). Resizing and moving toolbars The toolbars that appear in the folder windows you open are automatically locked in place. If you want to be able to resize the toolbars to display more or less buttons or to move them to new rows

91 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 91 Selecting Commands from Toolbars 91 at the top of the window, you must first unlock them. To do this, you right-click one of the toolbars (like the menu bar or the Standard buttons toolbar) and then click Lock the Toolbars on the shortcut menu to remove the check mark from this item. As soon as you do this, a sizing handle that looks like a separator made up of dots rather than a vertical line, appears at the beginning of each toolbar displayed in the open window. You can then move the toolbar to a new row at the top of the window and resize toolbars that share a row by dragging the toolbar by the sizing handle. After you finish repositioning and resizing the toolbars at the top of the window, you can lock them into their new positions by once more right-clicking one of the toolbars and then clicking Lock the Toolbars on the shortcut menu (to add a check mark to this item). Customizing the Standard Buttons toolbar You can customize the appearance of the Standard Buttons toolbar in one of the folder windows or the Internet Explorer 6 Web browsing window. In customizing a toolbar, you can change which buttons are displayed and the order in which they appear on the toolbar. To customize a Standard Buttons toolbar, select View Toolbars Customize on the window menu bar or right-click the toolbar and then click the Customize item on the shortcut menu to open the Customize Toolbar dialog box shown in the following figure. The Customize Toolbar dialog box is divided into sections: the Available Toolbar Buttons list box on the left and the Current Toolbar Buttons list box on the right. To add a button to the Standard Buttons toolbar, you click it in the Available Toolbar Buttons list box and then click the Add button. To remove a button from the toolbar, you click the button in the Current Toolbar Buttons list box and then click the Remove button. To move a button forward toward the beginning of the Standard Buttons toolbar, you click the button in the Current Toolbar Buttons list box and then click the Move Up button until the button moves up to the desired position. To move a button backward

92 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff toward the end of the toolbar, click the button in the Current Toolbar Buttons list box and then click the Move Down button until the button moves back to the desired position. To insert a vertical line separator (used to group buttons) in front of a button on the Standard Buttons toolbar, click the button in the Current Toolbar Buttons list box, click Separator at the very top of the Available Toolbar Buttons list box, and then click the Add button. In addition to adding, deleting, and moving buttons on the Standard Buttons toolbar, you can also change how the buttons are labeled and what size icons are used: Text Options: By default, Windows selectively labels certain buttons (such as Search and Folders) by placing the name to the right of the icon. To have all the buttons so labeled, click Show Text Labels in the Text Options pop-up list. To have none of the buttons labeled, click No Text Labels in this pop-up list. Icon Options: By default, Windows uses large icons for all buttons on the Standard Buttons toolbar. To switch to small icons (so that you can fit more buttons on the bar), click Small Icons in the Icon Options pop-up list. When you ve finished customizing the Standard Buttons toolbar, click the Close button to close the Customize Toolbar dialog box and return to the open window with your customized Standard Buttons toolbar. You can always restore the Standard Buttons toolbar to its original state by opening the Customize Toolbar dialog box and then clicking the Reset button before you click Close. Selecting Files and Folders To select the files and folders to which you want to do stuff like copy, move, open, or print, you select those icons (the small pictures identifying the folder or file). Most of the time, you click the file and folder icons in the windows to select them. Windows lets you know when an icon is selected by highlighting it in a reverse color (normally, a dark blue unless you change the Windows appearance settings). If you change the click options for Windows in the Folder Options dialog box so that single-clicking opens an item (see Opening Files and Folders in this part for details), instead of clicking a folder or file icon to select it (which succeeds only in opening the item), you just hover the mouse pointer over it.

93 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 93 When you need to select more than one file or folder in a window, you have a choice of things to do: To select all the icons in a window (this includes all drive, file, and folder icons located within it), choose Edit Select All on the window menu bar or press Ctrl+A. To select multiple folder or file icons that are located all over the place in the window, hold down the Ctrl key as you click each folder or file icon (the Ctrl key adds individual icons to the selection). Note that if you use single-clicking to open items, you need to hover over each item as you hold down the Ctrl key (no easy feat). To select a series of folder or file icons that are all next to each other in the window, click the first one in the series, then hold the Shift key as you click the last icon in the series (the Shift key adds all the icons in between the first and last one you click to the selection). Note that if you use single-clicking to open items, you need to hover over the first item until it s selected and then hold the Shift key as you hover over the last icon in the series (and if you think Ctrl+hovering is hard, wait till you try Shift+hovering). To reverse the icon selection in a window so that all the icons that aren t currently selected become selected and all those that are currently selected become deselected, choose Edit Invert Selection on the window menu bar. Note that the Invert Selection command is really useful when you want to select all but a few folders or files in a window: First use one of the aforementioned methods to select the icons of the files you do not want selected, and then choose Edit Invert Selection. Voilà! All the files in the window are selected except for those few you selected in the first place. Shutting Down Windows Selecting Files and Folders Shutting Down Windows 93 Windows XP includes a shut-down procedure that you really should follow before you pull the plug on your machine. To shut down Windows XP so that you can safely shut off your computer and get home to the kids or whatever, follow these steps: 1. Click the Start button on the Windows taskbar and then click the Turn Off Computer button that appears at bottom right of the Start menu to display the Shut Down Windows dialog box. 2. To completely shut down Windows and power down your computer, make sure that Shut Down appears in the text box labeled, What do you want the computer to do?, and then choose the OK button or press Enter.

94 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff In addition to the Shut Down option, you can select the following two options in the drop-down list box in the Shut Down Windows dialog box: Hibernate: Select Hibernate to put your computer into a deep sleep. This mode powers down the computer but maintains the state of your desktop. Restart: Select Restart to shut down and then immediately restart the computer (which you often have to do after installing a new piece of hardware or software, for example). You can also use this option in the unlikely event that Windows XP becomes so screwed up that you need to restart the whole shebang (when, for example, all the colors on the desktop get messed up and go all magenta and green on you). A couple of notes on using the Shut Down option in the Shut Down Windows dialog box: Windows XP displays a screen telling you that you can safely turn off the power to your computer. Should you decide that you want to restart the computer at that point, press Ctrl+Alt+Del (the old three-finger salute in DOS!) to restart Windows XP. When your computer is connected to a LAN and someone is currently connected to your computer, Windows XP displays a warning dialog box indicating that you re about to disconnect one or more people. Choose OK to go ahead and make these folks mad as all get out, or choose Cancel and then find out who s connected and make it his or her responsibility to shut down Windows XP on your computer after he or she logs off (so that you can go home and have a life). Using the Command Prompt For any of you Windows users who find yourselves longing for the good old days when you used DOS to get things done on a computer, Windows XP enables you to open a window with the DOS command prompt so that you can type away your nostalgia. Everything you need to know about using the Command Prompt window: To open the Command Prompt window within Windows XP, click the Start button on the taskbar (or press Ctrl+Esc), point to All Programs followed by Accessories and then click Command Prompt on the continuation menu.

95 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 95 Using the Command Prompt Using the Windows Taskbar 95 To return to Windows XP and close the Command Prompt window, type exit at the command prompt and then press Enter. You can also close the Command Prompt window by clicking the Close box. Don t fool around with DOS commands unless you re really sure of what you re doing. If you ever get a DOS window open and then get cold feet, just click the Close button in the Command Prompt window to close it and get back to Windows XP where you belong. Using the Windows Taskbar The taskbar is your constant companion in Windows XP. No matter where you go or what you do, the taskbar and the buttons of the various toolbars continue to be displayed along the bottom of the screen. That way, you have access to all of those features no matter whether you re doing a letter in your favorite word processor, surfing the Web with Internet Explorer 6, or perusing your favorite graphic images in the My Pictures window. The taskbar forms the base of the Windows XP desktop. Running along the bottom of the complete width of the screen, the taskbar is divided into three sections: The Start button with the accompanying Start pop-up menu at the far left Buttons for open toolbars and windows in the center area The Notification area (at the far right; also called the system tray) with current time and icons showing the current status of computer components and programs and processes that are running in the background When you open a folder window or program window on the Windows desktop, Windows adds a button representing that window to the center section of the taskbar. When you have multiple windows open at a time, you can bring a window to the top of the stack by clicking that button on the taskbar. Whenever you minimize a window by clicking the Minimize button, Windows reduces it to just a button on the taskbar. When you click this button on the taskbar, Windows restores the window to the previous size and position on the Windows desktop. The Start menu The Start button that opens the Start menu (see Launching Programs elsewhere in this part) always appears as the first

96 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff button on the taskbar. The Start menu is the most basic pull-down menu in Windows XP, containing almost all the commands you ll ever need to use. To open the Start menu, simply click the Start button in the lowerleft corner of the taskbar or press Ctrl+Esc. The Start menu is divided into two columns with your user name and picture appearing in the bar at the top of the menu (as you can see, I m the guitar see User Accounts in Part IV for information on how to change your picture) and the Log Off and Turn Off Computer buttons appearing in a bar at the very bottom. In the right column of the Start menu, the following options are fixed and never change: Run, Search, Help and Support, My Network Places, My Computer, My Music, My Pictures, and My Documents. In the left column, only the All Programs button at the bottom and the and Internet options at the top are fixed. All the other icons that appear in the area in between change over time as they represent icons of the programs that you launch most frequently. To open a folder window, such as My Documents or My Network Places, connect to the Internet, get your , or run one of the recently used programs, you simply click that icon in the Start menu. To display a pop-up continuation menu displaying all the rest of the programs installed on your computer, you click the More Programs button. You can then launch a particular program by clicking that item on the Programs menu.

97 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 97 See Customizing the taskbar and Start menu later in this part for details on how you can change the look and contents of the Start menu. The Quick Launch toolbar Using the Windows Taskbar 97 The Quick Launch toolbar adds a group of buttons to the Windows taskbar that you can use to start commonly used modules to get back to the desktop. These buttons include: Show Desktop: Minimizes all open windows in order to obtain immediate access to the Windows Desktop and all the desktop shortcuts and Web items that it contains. Launch Internet Explorer Browser: Starts Internet Explorer 6 for browsing Web pages. Launch Outlook Express: Starts Outlook Express for sending and receiving and messages from the newsgroups to which you have subscribed. Windows Media Player: Starts the Windows Media Player so that you can play music or video on your computer (see Playing Music, Video, and Movies in this part for details). In addition to these standard buttons, you can add your own custom buttons to the Quick Launch toolbar by dragging the shortcuts to your favorite program from the desktop or the program file from an open folder window to the Quick Launch toolbar. Follow these steps: 1. Open My Computer or Windows Explorer and then open the folder that contains the executable file that starts the program you want to add to the Quick Launch toolbar or that contains a shortcut to this executable file. 2. Drag the program file icon or shortcut icon to the desired position on the Quick Launch toolbar and then release the mouse button. The mouse pointer indicates where the new button will be inserted with a dark I-beam cursor at the tip of the pointer. A button for the program appears at the position of the I-beam in the Quick Launch toolbar. You can delete any of the buttons from the Quick Launch toolbar by right-clicking the button, clicking the Delete command on the shortcut menu, and then clicking the Yes button in the alert dialog box that asks you to confirm the deletion.

98 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff As you continue to add new buttons to the Quick Launch toolbar, some of the existing buttons at the end of the bar become hidden from view. You can display hidden buttons by shortening the middle area where the icons representing the windows you have open appear: position the mouse on the sizing handle for this middle area (the dotted vertical bar at the end of the Quick Launch toolbar) and drag it to the right until you reveal all your hidden Quick Launch buttons. The Notification area The Notification area (or system tray) displays the current time and icons that indicate the active status of various components, such as the status of your network connection, Active Sync connection to your handheld device, PCMCIA cards inserted into a laptop computer, or the printer queue. In addition, icons representing various programs or processes that run in the background, such as the Language Bar for using the new Voice Recognition and Handwriting Recognition in Office XP programs, the Windows Clipboard when it contains multiple items, and the MSN Messenger Service. This is also the place from which the Windows Update feature added to Windows XP displays the annoying Update Reminder message telling you that new updates for the system are available; see Using Windows Update later in this part for more on this feature. To identify an icon that appears in the status area, position the mouse pointer over it until the ScreenTip appears. To change the status of an icon, right-click it to display the pop-up menu; then click the appropriate menu option. For example, to open the Volume Control dialog box to adjust the volume of your speakers, you right-click the speaker icon in the Notification area and then click Open Volume Control on the pop-up menu. You can customize the Notification area as part of customizing the taskbar and Start menu properties. See Customizing the Notification area later in this part for details. Customizing the taskbar and Start menu The Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box enables you to customize the settings for the taskbar and the Start menu. To open this dialog box, right-click the Start button or any open area (with no buttons) on the taskbar, and then click Properties on the taskbar shortcut menu and the Taskbar tab in the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box.

99 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 99 Using the Windows Taskbar 99 The check boxes in the Taskbar Appearance section at the top of the Taskbar tab in the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box do the following: Lock the Taskbar: Locks all of the bars so that you can t adjust the size of the different areas of the taskbar, such as the Quick Launch toolbar. Auto-hide the Taskbar: Hides the taskbar until you roll the mouse pointer somewhere over that position. This way, the taskbar appears only when you need it. Keep the Taskbar on Top of Other Windows: Always places the taskbar in front of any window that you move down so far that they overlap it. Group Similar Taskbar Buttons: Displays buttons for files opened by the same program in the same area of the taskbar. Moreover, if the taskbar becomes so crowded with buttons that become too small to display, Windows collapses the buttons for a particular program into one button that when clicked displays a pop-up menu from which you can select the file you want to display on the desktop. Show Quick Launch: Displays the Quick Launch toolbar on the Windows taskbar immediately following the Start button. Customizing the Notification area You can also customize the settings for the Notification area of the taskbar by altering the settings in the Notification area section of the Taskbar tab. By default, both the Show the Clock and Hide Inactive Icons check boxes are selected. To remove the time from

100 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff the Notification area, click the Show the Clock check box to remove the check mark. To display all of the Notification icons even when the processes they represent are inactive, click the Hide Inactive Icons check box to remove the check mark. Note that when the Hide Inactive Icons setting is active, Windows adds a button marked with two lesser than signs (an << icon) that you can click to display all of the Notification icons. You can then click this button a second time, now marked with two greater than signs (an >> icon), to collapse the area and hide the inactive icons. In addition to changing these two settings for the Notification area, you can also change the circumstances under which particular notification icons are displayed in the Notification area. To do this, click the Customize button near the bottom of the Taskbar to open the Customize Notifications dialog box. The Customize Notifications dialog box contains a list box that is divided into Current Items and Past Items sections. You can change the display status for any icon listed in either section. To do this, click the icon and then click the drop-down button that appears next to the current status (Hide when Inactive is the default setting for all of the icons). To always have the icon displayed in the Notification area, click Always Show in this pop-up menu. To never have the icon appear in this area, click Always Hide instead. Customizing the Start menu To customize the appearance of the Start menu, you need to select the Start Menu tab in the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box (note that if you right-click the Start button and then click Properties, the Start Menu tab is automatically the one selected when the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box opens).

101 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 101 Using the Windows Taskbar 101 This tab gives you a choice between the Start menu as it now appears in two columns and the old, single column method used in previous versions of Windows. To switch to this single column view, click the Classic Start Menu radio button. Should you then later decide to switch back to the new, two-column arrangement, you can do so by clicking the Start Menu radio button. Both radio buttons are accompanied by Customize buttons that open dialog boxes in which you can change what icons appear on the Start menu. The following figure shows the Customize Start Menu dialog box that appears when you click the Customize button associated with the Start Menu radio button that controls the default, two-column Start menu arrangement. This dialog box has two tabs: General and Advanced. You use the settings on the General tab to control the size of the icons in the Start menu and the number of program icons displayed in the left column (between the More Programs button at the bottom and the Internet and buttons at the top). If you want to remove the Internet and buttons from the Start menu you re able do so by clicking the Internet and/or check boxes to remove those check marks. If you ve installed a Web browser in addition to Internet Explorer (such as Netscape Navigator) or programs in addition to Outlook Express (such as Outlook or Hotmail), you can select these programs to launch when you click the Internet or button on the Start menu. Just click the Internet or drop-down button and select the new Web browser or program in the pop-up menu. The options on the Advanced tab of the Customize Start menu enable you to modify which items are displayed in the right column

102 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff of the Start menu. It also enables you to control whether clicking the buttons of fixed items, such as the My Documents or My Network Places, opens an associated window or a menu from which you can select and open particular components. For example, currently when you click the Control Panel button on the right side of the Start menu, Windows opens the Control Panel window with links to categories of control panels because the Display As a Link setting is in effect. If you change this setting to Display As a Menu, Windows instead displays a menu of all the individual control panel options (Accessibility through User Accounts) when you click Control Panel in the Start menu. To add new icons to the right column of the Start menu, click those check boxes in the Show Menu Items on the Start Menu list box. To change the way fixed icons, such as the Control Panel, My Documents, My Computer, and the like, are displayed, click one of the following radio buttons: Display As a Link: This radio button is the default setting for all fixed items. It causes Windows to open a folder window showing the item folders and files. Display As a Menu: Select this radio button when you want Windows to display the item folders and files as menu items on a continuation menu that you can select and open from the Start menu. Don t Display This Item: Select this radio button to remove the display of the fixed item, such as My Network Places. To display recently opened documents on the Start menu, click the List Most Recently Opened Documents check box at the bottom of the Advanced tab. That way, you can open the document and, at the same time, launch the program all by clicking the filename in the Start menu. Switching between programs The Windows XP taskbar makes switching between programs as easy as clicking the button representing the program window. All you have to do to activate a program and bring the window to the top of your screen display is click the program button on the taskbar. Windows old-timers can still use the Alt+Tab shortcut keys first introduced in Windows 3.0 to switch among all open windows. In Windows XP, however, when you press Alt+Tab, a dialog box appears, with icons for each program window and a description of the icon. When you release both the Alt and Tab keys, Windows activates the window for whatever program icon is selected (indicated by the blue box surrounding the icon).

103 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 103 You can switch to another program that you have open anytime you need to check something in that program or need to get some work done. You also need to switch to a program so that you can close the window (and thereby shut it down) when you no longer need those services but do need the computer memory that the program is hogging. Hold down the Alt key as you press the Tab key to open a dialog box that enables you to cycle through icons for all the open windows on the desktop. After you select the icon for the window you want to bring up front (indicated by a blue box around the icon), just release the Alt and Tab keys. Arranging windows on the desktop Using the Windows Taskbar 103 Normally when you open multiple windows on the desktop, they overlap each other, with the most recently opened window fully displayed on top. As you open more windows, it can become increasingly difficult to arrange the windows so that the information you need is displayed on-screen (this is especially true when copying or moving files and folders between open windows). To help you organize the windows you have open, Windows offers several arrangement options. To rearrange the open windows with one of these options, you need to right-click the Windows taskbar (at a place that isn t occupied by a window button) and then click one of the following options: Cascade Windows to overlap the open windows so that the title bars are all displayed one above the other in a cascade. Tile Windows Horizontally to place the windows one on top of the other. Tile Windows Vertically to place the windows side-by-side. Minimize All Windows to reduce all the open windows to buttons on the Windows taskbar. Show the Desktop to reduce all the windows open on the desktop to minimized buttons on the Windows taskbar. Note that when you tile more than three windows, the windows are arranged both above and to the side of each other (with four windows, the screen appears divided into quadrants) so that you really can t tell whether you selected the Tile Windows Horizontally or the Tile Windows Vertically option. To remove a tiled arrangement, right-click the taskbar once more and this time click the Undo Tile option (added to the shortcut menu whenever you select the Tile Windows Horizontally or the Tile Windows Vertically option).

104 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Using the Task Manager The Windows Task Manager keeps tabs on your system and how it s running. You can use the Task Manager to get an overview of what programs and processes are running on your computer. You can also use it to switch to programs and to end programs that have stopped responding (in other words have frozen up on you). To open the Windows Task Manager, right-click the taskbar at a place where there are no buttons and then click Task Manager on the shortcut menu. The following figure shows you the Windows Task Manager running five different programs. To switch to another program from the Windows Task Manager, click the program in the list box on the Applications tab and then click the Switch To button. Windows will then minimize the Task Manager and display the program window on the desktop. To end a program that has frozen up on you, click the program in the list box on the Applications tab and then click the End Task button. Note that you will probably get an alert dialog box indicating that the program has stopped responding. Click the End button in this dialog box (as many times as you have to) to get Windows to kill the program. When you click a program in the list on the Applications tab, the status bar of the Windows Task Manager shows you statistics on the number of processes running under the program, the percentage of the CPU (Central Processing Unit, the big chip at the heart of the computer), and the memory usage of the program. If you like to look at schematics, click the Performance tab in this window to see a

105 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page 105 dynamic charting of the total CPU and memory usage on your computer (and to learn real useful stuff like the number of handles, threads, and processes that are being run). Creating custom toolbars Using the Windows Taskbar 105 You can add your own custom toolbars to the Windows taskbar from the folders that you keep on your computer. When you create a custom toolbar from an existing folder, Windows creates buttons for each of the shortcuts and icons that the folder contains. To create a custom toolbar from a folder, follow these steps: 1. Right-click the taskbar (without clicking any of the buttons or icons it contains) and then choose the Toolbars New Toolbar command on the shortcut menu that appears. Windows opens the New Toolbar dialog box, where you enter the pathname of the folder to be used in creating the new toolbar. 2. Select the folder whose contents is to be used in creating the new toolbar by opening the folder in the New Toolbar list box or by typing the directory path in the text box at the top. 3. Click the OK button to close the New Toolbar dialog box. As soon as you close the New Toolbar dialog box, Windows adds the new toolbar, with buttons for each shortcut and icon, to the taskbar. Note that Windows gives the new toolbar the same name as that of the folder you selected, which is automatically displayed along with the names of the buttons. 4. (Optional) To remove the new custom toolbar from the taskbar and place it in a separate toolbar window on the desktop or to dock it at the top, left, or right edge of the screen, drag the toolbar sizing handle to the desired place on the desktop. 5. (Optional) To switch from small to large icons, right-click the toolbar name or the sizing handle (the dotted vertical line at the start) and then click View Large Icons on the shortcut menu. Note that switching to large icons doubles the height of the Windows taskbar. 6. (Optional) To remove the toolbar name, right-click the name of the toolbar and click Show Title on the shortcut menu to remove the check mark. 7. (Optional) To remove the name of the buttons from the toolbar, right-click the toolbar name or the sizing handle (the dotted vertical line at the start) and then click Show Text on the shortcut menu to remove the check mark.

106 Part01.F 8/8/01 10:16 AM Page Part I: Doing Everyday Stuff Once you create a custom toolbar for a folder, you can open that folder window on the desktop by right-clicking the toolbar name or the sizing handle and then clicking Open Folder on the shortcut menu. All custom toolbars that you create last only through your current work session. In other words, whenever you close a custom toolbar or restart your computer, the toolbar is automatically erased and you must re-create it by using the steps just outlined if you want access to those buttons. Using Windows Update The Windows Update feature notifies you of the latest updates and bug fixes for the Windows XP operating system directly from the Microsoft Web site. To launch the Windows Update, you click the Start menu, point at the All Programs button, and then click Windows Update in the Programs menu. As soon as you click select Windows Update on this menu, Windows gets you online and connects you to the Windows Update Web page on the Microsoft Web site shown in the following figure.

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